


Shattered Stars

by Soulfulbard



Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space Opera, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-18
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2018-11-15 17:17:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 36,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11235609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soulfulbard/pseuds/Soulfulbard
Summary: In the void of space, decades after the fall of the old Empire, Jaune Arc, Captain of the Freespace ship Beacon are just trying to survive as scavengers and errand runners. Things change for them though when a stricken Atlasian cruiser drops a trio of enemies in their laps. Now the ragtag crew and the straitlaced Atlasians have to learn to survive together against a bigger foe.





	1. The Derelict and the Lost

'Analysis of Local Atmosphere Complete.'

'Passed 23 of 23 Parameters.'

'Atmosphere is Safe For User.'

“Oh thank the Founders and the Makers.” Jaune Arc reached up and went through the complicated mechanisms that kept his helmet in place. First he turned off the atmosphere generator on his back and closed off the valves on the hoses feeding into the back of his helmet. Then he popped the four seals under his jaw.

Air hissed as the pressure in the suit equalized with that of the ship. The helm deflated a bit in the process, the OLED screen that let him see the outside world distorting in the process. Finally, he flipped the tabs on either side of the hoses and pulled them around to beneath his chin, then levering them up to pull the helmet up and off his face like a hood.

The comparatively cool air hit his face and almost took his breath away and the darkness fell over him like a shroud. All dead ships were dark, but most of them were hot; their coolant systems having failed while the lack of matter around them making it all but impossible to radiate heat into the environment.

Only thirty years dead and this one was actually cool—as if its heat sinks and cooling towers were still active. It wasn't uncommon for even older derelicts to still have some systems active well after everything else failed, but that also meant security measures and failsafes might still be active.

He decided it was better safe than sorry and touched the comm in his ear. “Nora, is there a reason it's so cold in here?”

“Yup!” Came the chipper voice of his engineer and current partner in crime. “What brought this baby down was a direct hit to the primary fuel cells. She went dead in the water inside a cloud of xenon, then spent the last thirty odd years radiating all her heat into it. So. Cold.”

Jaune let out a sigh of relief and once more took hold of the handles of the dolly he'd brought with him, navigating it through the narrow alley between the long tables and benches that populated the room he was in. His destination was the set of double doors behind a low counter located in the rear.

“Good. I was getting worried they might have left something on when they launched lifeboats.” It took some finagling to get the dolly behind the counter, but he did so after a while and made for the doors.

“Nothing but life support and resource preservation.” Nora replied, the sound of metal on metal clanking coming through from her end. “The old Empire didn't like to waste anything and always expected they would win the war and just scoop everything back up.”

Over the comms, someone snorted and gave a sardonic laugh. “Yeah, that worked out well for them. Not that it worked out better for anyone else.” That was the voice of Yang Xiao Long, self-proclaimed 'ship's security officer'.

At last, Jaune had arrived at his target. There were rows upon rows of metal cases with glass doors. The holographic displays that kept running tabs of what the cases contained long since dead. Unlike the rest of the ship, this room was filled with an ever-present hum indicating that the cases were still powered and running.

“But we are all the better for it,” Jaune declared, fumbling in the pack at his side for a thumb-sized device which he plugged into the nearest display unit. A temporary burst of power took the place of the display's inner batteries and it flickered to life.

More importantly, the display reconnected with the security protocols on the case.

“Come here, beautiful.” He placed his hand on the display unit and closed his eyes briefly.

“Have I mentioned how creepy it is when you talk dirty to the machines?”

There was a heavy thumping sound as the magnetic security locks on the case disengaged and the seal failing. A delighted grin spread across Jaune's face as he opened his eyes. “Oh Yang, you're such the jealous type. But don't worry, I love you both the same...” He pulled open the heavy glass door to reveal shelves upon shelves of boxes, plastic containers and cans. “...even though she can make me dinner and you can't.”

He took a moment to admire all the foodstuffs contained in the stasis chest. It wasn't the entirety of what a ship like the one they were on would carry, just what the kitchen staff pulled up from the general stores for the day's meals and hadn't been eaten before the ship met its demise. A fraction of what was meant to feed that shit's crew complement of over one thousand for a day could feed Jaune's crew of five hungry bellies for a month.

“Ladies and gentleman—not forgetting about you Ren buddy—stow your nutrition blocks and tubes of supplements, we're going to be dining on something that looks a lot like food tonight.” He started grabbing things with wild abandon, stowing some choice bits in the satchel around his neck and the rest on the dolly. All the while, a cheer went up over the commlink from the rest of Jaune's crew.

Actual foodstuffs were at a premium offworld, not even the stations could afford the extra costs of not removing all water, excess fiber and any other unnecessary weight from cargo before launching it into space, so most food came in dense blocks and pastes that only resembled food. During the war, however, the various militaries promised career spacers consistent meals of the genuine article to fill their ranks and had the money and facilities to launch it and keep it fresh indefinitely.

After looting one case, Jaune became more discerning, touching the holodisplay to find the high-security cases—those from which the officers' meals would have been prepared from. There, he started filling the baskets on the dolly once more, only this time he was on the look out for special treats for the crew.

A handful of individually wrapped cookies for Ruby, smoked gaudon legs for Yang, pre-cooked hotcakes and a bag of syrup for Nora, a small wheel of good cheese for Ren. He didn't neglect himself either, making sure two large cans of halved pears made it into the satchel.

“Hey Nora, it's the Festival of First Fall up here. How're things down in engineering?”

There was more metal clattering over the comm. “Oh Jauney, I love it when you take me shopping! They've got everything down here! I'm taking two of every spanner!”

Jaune couldn't help but chuckle. “Keep the shopping list in mind, Nora. Your baby needs spare parts.”

“Oh don't you worry! I've already got my eye on an inverter coupler the Beacon's just been dying to get. Oh, and she's going to just love having brand new plasma induction coils for the bloom array. It's a happy day for everyone!”

“Just don't overdo it, okay? Right now no one knows this hulk is out here, so we might be able to pick at it for months. We owe Sun his weight in canned goods for this tip.” Something caught Jaune's eye as he continued looting. “Oh my Founders and Makers... guys, I just found peppers. A Zero crate of actual fresh peppers. Some officer probably bribed someone his whole check for these.”

The squeal came of the comm, not Yang this time, but her younger sister, the ship's primary gunner, Ruby Rose. “For real? Ohmigosh! I don't know if we should sell them or eat them! How many? Are there enough to eat some and sell some?”

It was hard to count the shapes inside through the translucent top of the Zero crate, so Jaune shook it lightly. “I'd say there's six... maybe eight if they're small. But hey, I see a couple more Zeroes in here, so maybe—”

“Jaune, I'm reading a gravity fluctuation near your location.” The new voice was that of Lie Ren, the Beacon's pilot and unofficial lookout. “It's consistent with a very large ship blooming in.”

“What?” Ruby sounded almost outraged, “Who would be blooming in here? We're weeks from any decent stations, let alone any planets.”

Ren grunted in reply. “No idea, Ruby, but they're not alone. A second fluctuation's appeared. They are right on top of you. Less than sixty miles.”

“What?!” Unlike Ruby, Nora sounded almost panicked, which usually wasn't one of the emotions she tended to swingshift into.

Jaune pulled the door to the chest closed carefully. “Calm down, everyone. No one has any idea we're here and it's not likely any big fish are going to want to bother with us. Ren, run dark and silent. Keep the channel open, but no contact once you relay me their ID after they bloom in. Nora, pack it up and move quietly and carefully back to the shuttle. We'll camp out there just in case we have to run.”

Except running was clearly already Nora's plan. At least that's how it sounded over the comms as there was a great crash followed by the pattering of weighted space boots on metal stairs. “Nope! Gotta run now! Gotta run right now!” She shouted.

Nora Valkyrie didn't panic. It was hard to tell if she was even capable of fear half the time. This was a woman who performed space walks for fun, climbed through the Beacon's engine and bloom core without a scrap of safety equipment and picked bar fights with every species that looked like they might be a 'fun' challenge.

Hearing her being afraid was warning enough for Jaune. After an obligatory attempt to push the dolly back through the double doors only for it to get stuck behind the counter, he grabbed whatever he could carry and vaulted over said counter, bolting back the way he originally came.

“What's the problem, Nora? What are we running for?”

“Unstable xenon!” she bellowed. “This ship's in the middle of a two-hundred mile cloud of unstable xenon. It's a waste product of the bloom drive. Normally it's recycled, but this big ship got shot up and leaked it into space! If whatever ships are blooming in here bloom out while they're in the cloud—BOOM!”

That got Jaune to pick up speed. “Why didn't you tell use this before!?”

“Because we didn't have plans to bloom out of here! It's perfectly safe unless something as hot as the plasma discharge from a bloom core sets it off! I mean you can even breath the stuff. It's really that safe.”

“Right up until 'BOOM', right?” Jaune replied dryly, trying to keep his terror in check. “How did this day go so far downhill so fast?”

Ren cleared his throat to regain their attention. “I'd hate to pile it on, but the first ships re-entered real space. ID is HKSS-1037 Paladin. They're an... Atlasian mobile base? Here?”

“Oh noi-jah,” Yang cursed. “I thought we left them far behind—separate galaxy far behind.”

RWBYRWBYRWBY

Time and space folded, collapsed and were then reconstructed, 'blooming' as it were with new matter from elsewhere in the universe. Fittingly, the Paladin was shaped like a flower: a central shaft centered around five spokes, each of which attached to a bow-shaped tower. The whole thing rotated around the main shaft while countless smaller structures clung to the spokes.

It would have been a thing of beauty if not for the fact that one of the towers was cracked nearly in half and was now surrounded by an expanding ring of dense, black smoke while lesser damage could be seen marring the other towers and central shaft.

On the bridge, there was pandemonium as damage and casualty reports came in as well as emergency sensor readings as the result of the blind jump they'd made with their bloom drive. Commander Leif Waldorf stormed to his command console amid a veritable cloud of officers all shouting their reports at him.

“Decks nine through seventeen of Tower Penta are sealed off. Ninety-three crewmen are MIA from there.”

“Thirty-five Xiphos fighters out of commission.”

“Lost power to Trika Sectors Gamma, Delta and Rho.”

“Primary life support failing on core decks five and six in their Quatra sections.”

“Long-range scans detect a derelict Imperial Capital ship fifty-eight miles, nine degrees off of Tower Penta. Looks like scavengers, sir.”

“Fluctuations indicate the Ex-Laws have followed our bloom. Arrival in ten minutes.”

Leif was mustering ever iota of his strength not to shake like... well a leaf. Never in all his twelve years as Commander of the Paladin had he ever been involved in such a pitched and—he would grudgingly admit—lopsided battle. It would reflect poorly on him that he'd ordered the ship to flee blindly, but the Ex-Law warship's firepower had been overwhelming.

Atlas prided itself on being on the cutting edge of technology even for a system that was part of the Zact core worlds, but what the bandit Ex-Laws, once considered relics of the war piloting antiques were now bringing to bear? Well it made him and his base look woefully inadequate.

Still, he couldn't let that show in front of the troops. Atlas was Strength. The Zact were Peace. They were the Law in the galaxy, the shining Justice that brought down the corrupt and vile Empire.

He let those ironclad facts stiffen his shoulders and straighten his spine. “Mister Valencia!” He bellowed, “Orders to engineering! Prepare to bloom again as soon as the drive is cycled and recharged! Random safe heading!” It was for good reason he didn't ask for an estimate of how long that might take—it might have been longer than the ten minutes they had before the Ex-Law ship arrived.

As soon as Valencia signaled that the order was received, he moved on, finally reaching his command console. There's he slammed his hands down on the glass surface and shouted, “Now who allowed these bandits into our skies! We may be in battle, but we are still the sole arbiters of true Order in the void! Madame Lazuli, I want an on-call squadron of Xiphos on the pads ten minutes ago to support an Adjudicator to go out there and arrest that garbage.”

“Sending the request to Tower Segunda now, sir.”

RWBYRWBYRWBY

Weiss Schnee fiddled nervously with the toggles on her Adjudicator uniform. It didn't matter that it was only because most of the senior Adjudicators on board the Paladin had been in council in Tower Penta when the Ex-Law ship had bloomed in less than a mile from it and opened fire and as such, she might well have been literally the only able-bodied Adjudicator left. No, this was her first official mission and she wanted to look as official as possible.

With that in mind, she aimed a glare at the woman beside her. The duty roster identified her as Blake Belladonna, a certified capture pilot. It hadn't warned her that she was a cast-off; a result of the Trinion Empire's genetic experiments. In Belladonna's case, this left her with a set of feline ears atop her head and nothing more. More importantly, it marked her as not a native Atlasian as Atlas's ancestors were part of the original stock that eventually led to cast-offs as well as more... useful races like the spacelings.

She clenched her fists at that thought. That was the sort of thing her family engendered in her and she'd joined the peacekeeping forces to get away from all that. Being a cast-off was no hindrance to being a perfectly excellent pilot.

Probably she shouldn't be using the word 'cast-off' either. Was there a non-insulting word for them? She would have to look it up once the Paladin came back into range of a data trunk. With that resolved, she decided to focus on the ship looming ahead of them. Shaped like a flattened egg with a complex trapezoidal structure extending from the one side, the craft was designed for one purpose only: the engage in electronic warefare with criminal spacecraft and bring them under control to be transported to a carrier like the Paladin for arrest ad processing.

Up above on the gantries, she saw the long, sleek Xiphos fighters that would be their escort. Short range and highly maneuverable, the Xiphos was the workhorse of the Atlasian starforce. Five of them were arrayed on their pads as their pilots, Atlasian marines sealed in powered armor, rushed to position themselves into the insertion cages extending below the fighters.

She could just make out the House crests they wore on their backs. Another bit of her family's training allowed her to rattle off the names of each military house as she saw them: Valentine, Stavros, Nikos, Jaelae, Freitag. That made her feel a bit more optimistic: a Valentine and a Nikos, both Houses of the Valorious; celebrated military lines recognized not just in Atlas but across the Zact core.

With that kind of skill backing her, her first mission was far more likely to be her first success.

RWBYRWBYRWBY

Jaune dropped his satchel and dropped an armful of pilfered food on the floor of the shuttle, right on top of the pile of parts already there. He hit the switch to close and seal the hatch before rushing to the front of the shuttle's single compartment where the pilot and copilot seats were.

“'Bout time!” Nora was already in the pilot's seat, hurriedly running the pre-flight checks. “Another minute and I was gonna leave you, Cap'n!”

He laughed nervously. “Y-yeah right. You wouldn't do that to me.”

“Wouldn't have thought it either boss, but look!” She pointed at the forward screen, which featured a zoomed-in view of the Atlasian ship. A flight of six craft were emerging from one of the towers and angling directly for them. The ships's HUD identified them as five Xiphos fighters and an ECM Interceptor.

To make matters worse, an alert came up onscreen that they were receiving an incoming communication.

“Nora, get us moving ASAP.” Jaune said, pretending to be calm. He then confirmed the communique in voice-only mode.

“This is Adjudicator Weiss Schnee of the Zact Protectorate of Atlas. You are hereby formerly charged with illegal salvage, graverobbing, piracy and unlawful modification of a cargo-class vessel into a weapon of war. Power down your shuttle and disable all onboard defenses of your ship and prepare to surrender helm control remotely.”

“Yeah, that's not gonna happen.” Jaune muttered at almost the same time Yang said the same over the comms. Taking a deep breath, he toggled the communication system to reply. “Adjudicator Schnee, this is Captain of the freespace ship Beacon, Jaune Arc. Please check your navigation: this is not Zact space. You're out of your jurisdiction.”

As soon as he switched the reply mode off, he looked to Nora. “You've modified this shuttle, right?” It was more a rhetorical question. Between Nora and Ruby, everything on the Beacon had been pushed way past the original specifications. She nodded, grinning madly. “Good. Can we outrun them?”

“Oh you bet!” Nora said excitedly. “Do you know what an Orion drive is?”

“Terrified to guess.”

Nora throttled up up the shuttled and decoupled from the derelict. “Probably a good idea on your part. And even better for us, we have a Nor-ion drive! Less nuclear, but more explosive!”

“Attention suspect shuttle. This is Colonel Luciano Valentine. This is your final warning. If you attempt to flee, your craft will be overtaken and destroyed.”

The maniacal glint in Nora's eyes were warning enough for Jaune to pull on his seat harness and brace for rapid acceleration.

Reaching past him, Nora hit the reply toggle. “Come and get us, chumps!” Hands flying to the control yoke, she throttled up and accelerated to the distant Beacon.

Meanwhile, Jaune re-assumed control of the communicator. “We are not in Zact space. Repeat, we are not in Zact space. Firing on us will be seen as an act of war by the Freespace Authorities.” There was no such thing as the Freespace Authorities—that's what made freespace freespace, but he was hoping that Atlas's obsession with propriety would lead them to stop and check.

“The Zact do not recognize Freespace.” Weiss replied almost immediately. “Our Alliance serves as a force of law wherever we travel. Now surrender or be destroyed.” Two of the Xiphos fighters had broken off formation and were accelerating toward the shuttle while the main force continued on toward the Beacon.

“Nora, now would be a great time for that Nor-ion drive thing right about now,” Jaune urged, pulling up different angles from the external sensors of the approaching ships.

Nora was doing the same, but with a hard-set look of mounting amusement. “Wait for it...”

Shooting a glare at her, Jaune pulled up scanner information on the other ships, the ones on a heading for the Beacon. “You do realize these Xiphos fighters aren't a joke. Once they're within eighty miles of us, their physical driver weaponry will chew through the shuttle's shields in seconds.”

All the reply he got was a tiny laugh and, “Wait for it...”

“Come on, at least throttle up the conventional thrusters.” He reached for the lever to do just that and earned himself a smacked hand.

“Not yet!” Nora reprimanded him sharply.

If she wasn't such an amazing engineer, Jaune would have... well he wouldn't have done all that much. Ren wouldn't stay if Nora was gone and having Ren as his pilot was key to Jaune's 'not dying' plans for the near future. So really all he did was glare at her and wait for whatever shenanigan she was up to to bear fruit.

On the panel he was reading, Jaune watched the pair of fighters cross the ninety-mile mark and braced himself for impact.

“Showtime!” Nora crowed, pushing the throttle full forward while at the same time mashing a button she'd jury-rigged under the main console. The shuttle bucked and lurched forward with frightening acceleration as a powerful explosion emanated from a heavy metal dish fitted between the shuttles three primary thrusters.

The two fighters closed to within firing range just in time to be met with a cloud of shrapnel and an exhaust plume that carried equal and opposite to the trust of the shuttle. One skipped off the edge of the plume and was turned broadsides into the debris field. Most of it was smaller than the end of Jaune's finger, but at the speed those bits were traveling, the craft might as well have come under fire from mass drivers. Hundreds of thousands of projectiles battered the weaker broadside shields until they gave out and deadly flying metal and ceramic filled the cabin, killing its pilot.

Luckier, or just plain more stubborn than its second, the other Xiphos bulled forward, depending on its more powerful forward shields to plow through the debris. A flare of red flashed above the shuttle as its pilot opened fire on them.

“Suspect shuttle,” the new voice on the channel was female and sounded strained compared to the cold, impartial tone of the previous one. “This is Pilot First Class Pyrrha Nikos. You are now charged with the murder of Colonel Luciano Valentine. In accordance with Atlasian Aerospace law, I am within my rights to destroy you and your craft as I see fit. You have a choice: stand down now, or perish in the Void.”

Nora hit the comm controls at her console before Jaune could say anything. “Hey! That was self defense, you lousy Zact! And you're out of your mind if you think you're ever gonna take us alive!” Her free hand pulled up a scrolling list of the shuttle's meager armament and activated the magnesium flares.

A series of sealed canisters poured out of the rear of the shuttle, exploding thereafter into blinding flashes of light. This was answered by a series of mass driver shots that thankfully missed thanks to Nora's wild steering.

“Jaune, I'm going to assume comm silence isn't a priority anymore and let you know: the second arrival is incoming. From the readings, it's an Ex-Law capital ship—class unknown,” reported Ren.

“Because my day's been going way too well already.” Jaune pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to think with all the chaotic jigs and jukes Nora was employing to keep them from being blown out of the Void. “Okay let's cut our losses. Already wanted for murder, let's go for kidnapping and hope Atlas negotiates for hostages. Get Ruby up at spinal gunner and Yang at the forward array. Have her warm up the Attractor Beam and have Ruby prepare to shoot out that Adjuicator's electronic warfare antennae as soon as they're in range.”

“I take it you have a plan?”

“I have a very stupid plan, yes. Let me know when they're in position.” Then he set the comm back to broadcast to the Atlasians. “Atlas fighters, I apologize for the loss of your man, but my pilot is right: we killed in order to avoid an unlawful arrest by authorities outside of the Zact sphere of influence.”

“Stop lying,” snapped the fighter pilot, Pyrrha. “We bloomed to the fallback point, which is well within Zact space.”

Jaune grit his teeth at Zact stubbornness. “I know damn well where I am. Unless things have changed in the last month, this system isn't even on any Zact maps. Not on Ex-Law maps either—so thank you very much for bringing them here, by the way.”

In the trailing Xyphos, Pyrrha had a moment of confusion before checking long-range scanners. She was just in time to see the Ex-Law warship that assailed the Paladin earlier bloom in not twenty miles from the wounded capital ship.

Her heart skipped a beat.

Shaped like a flattened crescent with a dozen spars extending above and below, the Ex-Law ship was almost half the size of the Paladin, but the memory of its firepower was barely an hour old for her. The primary weapon; a cluster of mass drivers, had cut the Paladin's shields to ribbons, making a mockery of Atlasian defensive technology while sending people she'd known all her adult life or longer to the grave. All she really had left were her squadron and Colonel Valentine too was now among the dead.

Whether it be by the scavengers or the Ex-Laws, she now stood to lose everything. She switched channels to the mission link to the Adjudicator. “Adjudicator Schnee. The Ex-Law ship has just bloomed in near the Paladin. With Colonel Valentine dead, you are now mission lead and I am squadron leader. Please advise.”

A long, terrible moment passed as Pyrrha waited and watched as the Paladin deployed fighters and the Ex-Law craft responded in kind.

“Pilot Nikos,” Weiss sounded on the verge of panic, though she was clearly trying to disguise it. “I am sending my escort back to aid the Paladin, but we are not about to allow the law or Colonel Valentine go unavenged. Please continue your assault on the shuttle while we move within electronic warfare range. I doubt these savages can survive a full minute under my attentions.”

“As you order, Adjudicator.” Pyrrha tried to throttle up but found her acceleration was already at maximum. A shuttle from a so-called 'savage' ship was keeping ahead of her, even if only just. She'd never really believed the prevailing attitude that the worlds on the Zact fringe were all backward, but now she had proof.

Back inside same shuttle, Jaune had been watching the same events as Pyrrha had, only his thoughts were toward preventing loss rather than mourning it. The Atlasian ship had sent out what appeared to be all of its available fighters to sally forth against the newcomer.

“They're stalling so they can recharge their bloom drive,” he said aloud as it dawned on him.

Nora stiffened in the pilot's seat beside him. “Not good, Jauney! Not good! We're still in the cloud! If they try to bloom now, it'd be like we were flying through the corona of a star! You've gotta make them stop—or slow down. We need two minutes to get out of the cloud!”

He'd never heard such terror in her voice. Fingers moving on their own, he started scanning channels until he found the Atlasians' global frequency. After a few false starts, he began broadcasting. “Attention Atlas ship and fleet. I am Captain Jaune Arc of the freespace ship Beacon. I'm sure you've got your hands full at the moment—” 

“Get off of this channel!” boomed an angry male voice.

“And you may not understand the import of what I say, but you are currently floating in a cloud of contaminated waste xenon from the derelict ship. If you attempt to bloom now, you will ignite the gas and kill everyone in the area. Do not bloom. Repeat: do not bloom!”

As if responding for all of Atlas, Pyrrha finally managed to correct for Nora's flying and a mass driver shot shook the shuttle.

“Right dorsal stabilizer's hit!' Nora called out, though she was smirking. “That'd be bad—if we were in atmosphere. Ha-ha!” She threw the ship into another juke, then straightened out and lined the shuttle up to approach the Beacon from below.

The comm crackled and the voice of Adjudicator Schnee came on the line. “A sad ploy, 'Captain' Arc. One that will not save you from you fate. No true Atlasian would give a moment's thought to a 'warning' from a desperate man.”

“Why would a desperate man not want the ny-jani Zact to leave the system? That's my fondest dream right now! If your Commander blooms now though, everyone dies!”

“Quite a believable fiction when I am just moment's away from engaging your ship in electronic warfare.” Weiss snapped. “You rimward barbarians probably haven't even heard of the sort of people you would need to defend against me!”

Jaune smirked as he sent a text-only message to Ruby's comm. “Correction, Adjudicator: this rimward barbarian—who was born on a core world by the way—just can't afford the kind of person who traditionally defends against you. However, out here in freespace where we don't have all the fancy facilities of the Zact or even many bones to pick off a fallen empire?”

Right on cue, an explosion rocked the Adjuicator's ship, shearing off the ship's primary antenna array.

“We improvise.” He finished triumphantly. “Nice shot, Rubes. Now let's see if we can pull ourselves out of this pile of shit that landed on us. “Nora, Ren: to your jobs. Yang, Pull the Adjuicator's ship to the shuttle docking clamps.”

Yang squawked over the comm. “As much as I'd love to argue that I should be blasting her to debris, the more important thing is... don't you need those clamps to dock?”

“Nope.” Jaune popped the 'p' in the word, a habit he'd picked up from the sisters. Ahead of them, the belly of the Beacon was opening up to reveal the ship's primary docking bay. “We're doing a barn swallow.”

“Coming in hot, Renny!” Nora squealed, throwing on deceleration thrusters as the shuttle arrowed toward the bay doors.

Jaune placed his hand on his console and tapped the shuttle's computers to run calculations. “Ren, start closing the docking doors on my mark. Ny-ja do I hope someone is willing to pay full price for what I managed to get off the derelict because this is going to be one monster repair bill.”

On the main screen, he watched the cargo bay move closer and closer while on another, he saw the Adjuicator's ship lurch violently under the invisible sway of the Attractor Beam. Finally, he switched to a rear-facing camera and found the Xiphos closing fast. Its pilot wasn't slowing down at all.

Then there was no more time. Nora fired port and starboard thrusters, narrowing the shuttle's profile just enough to pass through the now-closing cargo doors. It looked like they were clear, but then, like its namesake weapon, the Xiphos thrust in through the opening, destroying its spinal and dorsal weapon arrays, but forcing itself into the bay alongside the shuttle with the sound of screaming metal and cracking ceramics.

The cargo doors clanged closed and the automated systems reasserted gravity, causing the two ships to fall into one another in another cacophonous impact. The harness bit into Jaune's chest as he jostled in his seat with the impact.

“Ny-ja! That woman is crazy!” He shouted as he hurriedly unlatched said harness.

“I'm starting to like her!” Nora said, looking no worse for wear from the crash.

Jaune just shook his head. “Let's hurry up. I need you down in engineering making sure we're clear of that cloud.” After untangling himself from the harness, he dragged himself out of the co-pilot's seat and to the emergency hatch. A sharp twist of the handle and a firm press blew out the seals and caused it to fall open.

“Hurry up,” He called back to Nora as he climbed out into the chaotic cargo bay. “We don't know how long—urk!” An armored hand wrapped around his throat and pulled him clear of the hatch. Another caught his shoulder and slammed him against the outer hull of the shuttle hard enough to make stars explode in his eyes.

When his vision cleared, his first thoughts of how the designs of Atlasian marine armor certainly earned high marks in the highly coveted 'make your enemies shit their pants' category. Colored somewhere between rust and dried blood, it boosted the wearer's height to a little over seven feet. The ceramic plates were styled to mimic exaggerated musculature complete with bulging veins and an eight-pack of abdominal muscles. But the prize went to the helmet. It was a wolf's head with the sensor array arranged to create a pair of glowing red wolf-eyes that bored into his soul and accentuated the howling (pun intended) black void that was the helm's opaque face plate.

“Hello again.” The suit's respirator—likely by design—distorted the words into a bestial growl and Jaune had no illusions that the woman inside the suit meant it to sound that way.

“Jaune!” Nora called, boiling out of the hatch like a one-woman anthill. She'd found a spanner the size of her arm somewhere in the cockpit and now brandished it with malice of forethought.

“Get down to engineering!” He snapped, willing himself to stay calm.

That got more difficult as the left hip of the armor opened and from it was drawn a heavy pistol. He was able to get well-acquainted with it as it was pressed into his forehead.

“For the murder of Colonel Luciano Valentine, I hereby sentence you to death, Jaune Arc.”

There came a time in every man's life where he had to take responsibility for what he'd done and face the consequences bravely and without flinching.

This was not that time in Jaune Arc's life. “W-wait! Please!” he actually whined and tried to push the gun away with a bare hand against the strength of powered armor. “Let's talk about this! I'm sorry your leader died, but we weren't trying to kill him. My engineer's just... enthusiastic when it comes to high explosives. I don't even know where she gets that much!”

The grip on his shoulder, which was holding him up, tightened. “If Colonel Valentine were merely my leader, I would be happy to bring you to trial, to allow you to speak your piece. However, I am not facing you here and now as a good soldier of Atlas, but as a protege avenging her mentor. If it were not for Colonel Valentine, I would be nothing; not even a citizen regardless of my house name. He saw potential in me, helped me hone it, sponsored me at the Academy. That man made me who I am. And for his sake—for the sake of the wife and children you've forced him to leave behind—I will unmake you now.”

Jaune cast his eyes downward. “I'm truly sorry for your and their loss,” he said with genuine regret, though his eyes burned with defiance and determination. In the next moment, he released her weapon and lunged for her head with his now-free hand.

Instinct made Pyrrha squeeze the trigger. She expected her weapon to send a thumbnail-sized ball of plasma through the skull of her mentor's killer. What she didn't expect was for the weapon to eject its battery out the back, then the housing to come open in maintenance mode.

Meanwhile, Jaune slapped his palm down on on the back of her head where he prayed the suit's communications antenna was located. His prayers were answered by an instant connection to the suit's operating system.

He always had a hard time explaining how his technopathy worked to his crewmates, since they didn't have it. Doing so was something like explaining having a conversation to someone who doesn't understand what language is. What he did was between playing an instrument and having said conversation at the speed of thought.

Right now, he was screaming lies about Pyrrha being injured and needing immediate medical attention.

Emergency protocols then did his work for him. Latches and seals throughout the armor started to come undone. At the same time, the face plate separated and retracted into the cowl. “But,” he continued what he'd been saying earlier, “I've got lives to save.”

Then he punched what he'd admit was the prettiest face he'd punched in years.

He'd led an interesting life.

What he lacked in strength or technique, he made up for in surprise. Pyrrha stumbled back, releasing her grip on his shoulder. He capitalized on this by bulling forward just as her chest plate split open, slamming his shoulder into her sternum and knocking her off balance.

Almost falling over too, Jaune managed to stumble to a stop before dashing for the nearest wall of the cargo bay. Spying a spot on the wall where an old shipping decal had been placed, he slapped his palm on it and applied his technopathy. The weapon cache opened, an actuator extending a loaded plasma pistol which he immediately trained on Pyrrha. Even with her burdened by her now-dead-weight armor, he didn't want to give her a chance to spring a surprise on him.

“Do. Not. Move.” he said sternly as soon as he was sure he had her attention. Green eyes blazed with rage, but she stopped trying to rise, remaining on one knee. Whatever she'd been wearing to tame what must have been a full meter of flame-red hair had come loose in her fall, leaving it to fall wild across her back and face.

When he was certain she wasn't going to try something, he spoke again, but not to her. “Ren connect to the local ansible and broadcast my voice as a full-spectrum emergency message.”

“Connecting now. But Jaune, do you even have a plan about what to do with either of those ships?” Ren's voice came over the cargo bays spearkers.

“Not as such. Just set it up.” The discussion distracted him just enough that he barely dodged the metal fist that came flying at him. He watched as the black-glowing thing slammed into the metal wall next to him and managed to make a small dent. What really concerned him was that it wasn't attached to Pyrrha.

Following its trajectory backward, he was just in time to see her rising to her feet. The chest, back, shoulder and lower torso plating from her armor was on the ground behind her, leaving her in her flight suit, her armor's gorget, boots, upper arm pieces and one gantlet.

As he watched, she snapped her hand forward in a knife-hand strike. The second gauntlet glowed black like its sibling, then slipped off her arm, sailing right at Jaune's face.

He ducked, only to watch his enemy swipe her hand downward, followed by the gauntlet come down hard across his back. That was just a feint though, as suddenly his pistol was glowing black and trying to wrench itself free from his grasp.

“So I'm not the only one of the Empire's leftover special snowflakes in freespace anymore. Good to know.” He planted his feet, trying to ignore that her polarity was strong enough that she was starting to pull him toward him and started squeezing the trigger.

The pull on his weapon disappeared as the white-yellow plasma bolts now took on the black glow, deflecting around the Atlasian pilot as if she had a personal shield.

“Right... plasma, magnets. Should have expected that.” Jaune hung his head over that miscalculation.

“Ansible connected. Go ahead, Jaune,” said Ren's voice.

“Now?!” Jaune asked. He knew Ren had no way of knowing, but he was clearly in mid-peril. The look of murder in Pyrrha's eyes had redoubled and was enhanced by the remaining armor on her arms becoming overshadowed by the black glow and disassembling itself in a cacophony of screaming metal. The pieces began to orbit her slowly, their glows making the air seem like fire.

“You wretched, dishonorable savage! You pretend to have remorse for the death of my mentor in order to ambush me!?”

A piece of armor launched at him, causing Jaune to take cover behind an empty shipping crate. “I didn't—you know what? I don't have time for this.” On hands and knees, he started to crawl from cover to cover to avoid more shrapnel. “Attention Atlasian and Ex-Law fleets within the sound of my voice. Your ships are currently inside a cloud of volatile waste gas. The bloom ignition process could ignite this gas and destroy all of you. The commander of the Atlasian fleet has already ignored my warning, so I am now appealing directly to you: if you are an engineer on any bloom-capable ships, I beg you to ignore any orders to bloom while you remain inside the cloud. If you are a pilot or navigator, I suggest you move with all speed to an area outside the cloud. My engineer will be making her findings available on the ansible.

“Life is short out here in freespace. We don't need to add thousands more deaths to our balance. Please, listen to me.” He came up short as he nearly crawled into a piece of jagged, black-glowing metal that pressed itself firmly and insistently between his eyes.

Looking up, he found Pyrrha Nikos standing over him, hand upraised to apply the last little nudge to the shard that would make it the last thing to go through his mind. Her expression however, was slowly showing more confusion than rage.

“Stand up,” she ordered.

The potentially deadly piece of shrapnel followed him up as he complied. He kept his hands up and his eyes crossed as he tried to keep an eye on the method of his execution. “I wasn't lying when I said I was truly sorry. If I knew what Nora's trick back there was going to do, I wouldn't have let her use it.”

“You are a pirate and a grave robber. What do you care about another body on the pyre?”

“Who said that? I'm a scavenger and an errand boy for the actual players out here in freespace. I don't want people to die needlessly.”

Ren's voice then cut in. “Jaune, incoming communication from the Paladin.”

“Please be good news. Send it down, Ren.”

“--as will not be intimidated by some spacer criminal no matter what pablum he spews.” the voice of the Atlasian Commander was saying. “Perhaps the Ex-Laws will be more receptive—like attracts like after all—but as for us, the Paladin will bloom the moment all recoverable craft are tucked in.”

Completely forgetting the threat to his life, Jaune dropped his hands. “No! Look here you Zact drone; we are talking about the lives of your people here, not some contest to see who's swinging more in his pants! If you bloom, they will all die!”

A scoff came in reply. “As if we have any reason to believe you.”

Casting around for something—anything--that could stop what was coming. He search ended with a pair of vivid green eyes whose fire was being dampened by inner conflict. “Then believe this, you ny-jani pig. I have one of your Adjudicators, her pilot—and Pyrrha Nikos. That name ring a bell? Because I think it might. No way the Zact wouldn't keep a close eye on a spaceling from the Emperor's private bloodlines.”

There was sputtering from the other end of the connection before the commander returned, all abluster. “You sir are in violation of the Writ of Official Secrets. There is no truth to that old legend.”

“You sure about that? Because I just happen to have a souvenir in my genetic code from the Emperor's tinkering too.” He swallowed, knowing there would be repercussions for what he said next. “Cadre Three Zero Zero One. Technopathy. Are you listening too, Ex-Laws? If you can catch me and don't use your bloom systems, I'll turn myself over to you and serve faithfully.”

Silence. It was an offer no one could just blithely turn down.

However.

“We will not be delayed or diverted by your chicanery any longer. The crew you've decided to take hostage are deemed acceptable losses.”

The link went dead.

“No.” Jaune said. “No! You stupid bloated—get back here! Ren, hit the ansible again!”

“It's not going to do any good. I'm moving us back as far from the cloud as possible.”

Jaune ran his fingers through his hands. “Ruby, get up to the spinal gun. Target the Paladin's bloom core as soon as it opens!”

A second later, Ruby's voice came over the speakers. “We're too far. I mean, I can hit it, but space and time don't work that way.”

“Someone do something!” he shouted, voice echoing through the cargo bay. He moved over to the wall again, completely ignoring Pyrrha at this point. He found one of the projector's for the ship's holographics suites and brought up the Beacon's visual scanning of the area around the derelict, superimposing Nora's estimates for the cloud over them.

None of the smaller crafts had moved to escape and the Ex-Law ship was still pouring plasma and mass driver fire onto the Paladin. Several degrees of magnification later, and he was looking at the central spire of the Atlasian ship expanding open to expose the ships bloom core to the vacuum of space.

“You were completely honest about saving them, weren't you?” A voice asked from behind him.

“At least someone realizes it,” He muttered, eyes transfixed as the central core opened and the plasma channels started to flicker—each pre-ignition just a tiny bit too bright as it burned through the volatile gas.

A pair of strong hands grabbed his shoulders. “Then don't look.” He was turned bodily until her was face-to-face with Pyrrha Nikos. It felt like he'd known those eyes forever, seen that welling sadness before. He started to turn away—to watch in morbid self-flagellation—only for her to release his shoulders and grab either side of his face, locking his gaze on hers.

“There's no reason to watch them die,” she said quietly. “Neither of us needs to see that.”

The holographic image flared white as the plasma lit and so too did the gas. It washed one side of her face out completely and cast the other in impenetrable shadow. Together, they stood there, desperately focusing on each other until the light faded and a heavy cloak of silence fell over them.

Neither knew who it happened to first, but eventually, their strength and resolve failed them and their legs gave out, sending them collapsing tot he ground, each with only the other keeping them from falling over entirely. They sat there, panting as they fought against their own tumultuous emotions.

“I can never forgive you,” Pyrrha whispered after a long time, “But I can't seek vengeance on you now. Not after what I've seen and heard of you.”

Whatever Jaune might have replied with was drowned out by Ren coming back on over the speakers. “Preliminary long-range scans suggest the Paladin has sustained eighty-percent damage. The primary spire is... it's gone. The rest of the craft suffered a complete hull failure. Even if it hadn't, the area experienced temperatures comparable to the corona of a star. Chance of survivors is three percent assuming there were any environmentally shielded compartments. No rescue beacons yet.”

“The stupid peacock,” Jaune muttered, “Letting others die for his sin of pride. And the Ex-Laws, Ren?”

“Seventy-three percent damage estimates, but an even lower chance of survivors. It suffered catastrophic structural failure—nothing out there of it larger than a person for the most part. It's like it was designed to disintegrate upon destruction.”

Jaune squeezed his eyes closed. “Any lifeboats? Fighters that made for the edge of the cloud?”

“Just the Adjudicator craft you had Yang pull in with the attractor beam. What do you want to do with the crew? It's all I can do to keep Yang from purging their environment.”

Pulling away from Pyrrha, who was watching him with a calm intensity, he forced himself to his feet and dusted himself off. “I guess technically they're prisoners.” He offered her a hand up and after some reluctance, she accepted it. “Nora, go prep the spare crew quarters we use for passengers—remove anything that could be a weapon. Ruby? With me, we'll bring the Adjudicator and her pilot in.”

“What about me?” growled the voice of Yang.

“There's a Xiphos down here that's basically tried to mate with Shuttle 1. How about you see to that?”

“Ny-ja. You know I should be the one handling the prisoners.”

Jaune shook his head even though she couldn't see it. “Not if I want them alive.” He turned to Pyrrha as he rechecked the pistol he'd miraculously managed to hold on to. “We both know you could just take this from me and try to fight my crew.”

“Even if I managed to commandeer your ship, where wold I go?” She asked, “I don't know what the headings were when the Paladin bloomed and according to you, we're far outside Zact-controlled space. My best option is to surrender to your judgment, which I do.”

He nodded to her, grateful. “Let's hope your shipmates see it that way.” He started making his way toward the stairs leading up the the cargo hold's gantry, glancing back periodically to make sure she was following him. “You said the Paladin was blooming to fallback coordinates? How does a navigator khag things up so perfectly that they bloom into an entirely different spiral arm of the galaxy?”

“I have no idea,” Pyrrha admitted. “Fallbacks are pre-programmed in any case, so operator error shouldn't even be a an issue.” She hesitated at the doors leading into the ship proper, casting a sad look back to her Xiphos. “I suppose we will never know. With no surviving command or navigation staff and very little in the way of remains of the base itself...”

She let her point hang in the air as they transitioned from the cluttered and industrial-looking cargo bay into a cheerily lit hallway with faux wood floor and wall panels. It terminated in a room shaped like a stretched octagon. Four of the walls featured ladders leading up and down. The others featured bulkhead doors.

A woman with a voluminous mane of blonde hair was climbing up from below as they entered. She wore a brown flight suit with the jacket open over an orange tank top and had a pair of chunky pistols of a make Pyrrha wasn't familiar with hung from a thick leather belt at her waist.

Her violet gaze turned murderous as she saw who had entered the intersection with her and one hand immediately went to a pistol, drawing it out in a single fluid motion.

“Yang!” Jaune's shout bounced off the walls as he interposed himself between the two women.

“One reason.” Yang ground out. She took two long steps and ended with the barrel of her weapon just a hair's breadth from Jaune's eye. “Give me one reason why I shouldn't paint the juncture with that lousy Zact's brain right now, Jaune.”

Jaune leaned away from the weapon. Standing up to Yang was a lot easier when it was via the comms where he didn't have to stand directly in the eye of the storm of palpable rage that swirled around her. “Yang. Listen to me.”

“No you listen to me,” the furious woman growled. “You promised me. It was my only demand when we joined up with your crew: You promised to keep Ruby out of the hands of the Zact. Now you've got one on your ship and,” she looked past him, “ny-ja you don't even have her cuffed or anything.”

“Yang, we are over a thousand light years from the edge of Zact space, the only Zact craft within a parsec are a completely thrashed short range fighter in our belly and an ECM ship without a mast clamped to the shuttle dock completely at our mercy. They're not a threat, okay?”

“Did you catch a case of stupid on that derelict? Zact are always a threat! They can't help themselves. They've got to pick and dig and twist to force things to be the way they want them to be. They don't care who it hurts to do it either. You don't think I heard that asshole you were talking to? He sent out a patrol to arrest you while they were fighting for their lives, then killed everyone under his command to spite you.”

She shot a hateful glare past Jaune to Pyrrha. “You don't think this one wouldn't rip out our life support or hijack the controls to bloom us into the nearest star just so she could see 'justice' done? Because that's what they're like. Every ny-ja Zact in the universe.”

“Yang? What's going on?” A young woman poked her head out from the hatch at the top of one of the ladders. As she was hanging upside down from said ladder, her red-tipped black hair fell in her face as she tried to survey the events happening in the juncture.

“Ruby, go back up and lock yourself in the gunner's nest.” Yang said, not taking her eyes off Jaune or Pyrrha.

Curious silver eyes squinted at the three of them. “But the captain said...”

“I don't much care for anything the 'captain' has to say right now.”

That just made Ruby laugh. Her head disappeared and a moment later, she came sliding down the ladder feet first, landing heavily. She was wearing a long sleeved black shirt with a red vest, black leggings and a long red skirt and heavy boots. A pair of black fingerless gloves with roses printed on the back completed the outfit, as did the plasma rifle on her back. “So. What'd Jaune do now?”

It was only then that she seemed to notice Pyrrha's presence. “Wait a minute. I thought I was supposed to help you go collect the prisoners, Cap'n.”

“You are,” Jaune said, starting to sound tired. “We're collecting the pilot and the Adjudicator from the ECM ship. This is Pyrrha—she'd from the Xiphos that was shooting at us and she's already surrendered.”

“Then how come she's not cuffed?” Ruby asked the obvious question.

“That's what I want to know!” Yang shouted.

Now heedless of Yang's gun in his face, Jaune rubbed his temples. “For one? We don't have cuffs.”

“Then get some wire or rope or something. We can't just let her run around loose on the ship,” demanded Yang.”

By then, Pyrrha had had enough of having her people disparaged. “Why?!” she demanded, stepping up next to Jaune and getting the barrel aimed at her forehead for her troubles. “Why do you hate the Zact so much? We bring order and civilization to the three galaxies. We defeated the Empire and brought peace. Every world we touch is allowed to join in the benefit of our technology, medicine, culture. And to fight that, you would turn on your own captain? Threaten his life after he just put his all into saving even his worst enemies?”

She could have sworn she saw Yang's eyes turn red for a second. “You arrogance piece of khag!” The next thing Pyrrha knew was a blur in her vision and all the sound in the juncture giving way to a roar that became a terrible ringing in her ears.

It took her a moment to realize the blur in front of her was the sleeve of Jaune's space suit. He'd pushed Yang's gun aside, sparing her a bullet between the eyes, but not the explosive noise of its discharge. Then Jaune's sleeve moved and the next thing she saw was Jaune and Ruby trying to wrestle the hand cannon out of Yang's hand. The blonde woman was shouting at the top of her lungs, but deafened as she was, Pyrrha heard none of it.

Then Ruby was talking with Jaune chipping in what appeared to be a heartfelt support. Little by little, Yang started to calm down and the tinnitus started to subside for Pyrrha.

“...old man has to say, but you better keep a guard on them every second they're on this ship.” Yang was saying, easily shrugging off both her crewmates now that he'd collected herself. Then she glared at Jaune, who was holding her pistol. “And give me my ny-jani gun back.”

“Just promise not to fire this thing in the ship again. Nora threatens us with enough hull breaches as it is.”

Yang just snatched the weapon back and checked it. “Whatever. Let's go get the other two.”

“Right. You and Ruby take point and flank the docking hatch. I'll stand front and center with Pyrrha. Seeing her should at least give credence to the idea that we mean them no harm.”

“I mean them harm,” Yang grumbled. All the same, she and Ruby went on ahead, moving through the doors opposite the cargo bay.

Meanwhile Jaune hung back with Pyrrha who was watching the two women go, looking slightly shellshocked. “You okay? Did you get hit?”

“Why does she hate us so much? We...”

“You don't want to repeat the Zact sales pitch on this ship. I mean, I understand. My parents were in the same place you were before they actually had to be on the front lines of all that 'bringing civilization' stuff. We don't have time for a history lesson, but believe me when I say that Yang lived that lesson. Ruby... Ruby was too young to remember. And the only thing Yang wants in this whole galaxy is to make sure Ruby never has to learn herself.”

Reluctantly, Pyrrha followed as Jaune continued through the doors into a short hallway that then gave way to a lounge of some sort, complete with a dining table, meal preparation appliances, and other homey touches that made one almost forget one was in space. “I don't understand...” she murmured.

While the implication was clear: that the Zact had done something deeply terrible to the sisters, it didn't track with what she'd known all her life. After all, she was living proof of the dark experiments performed by the Trinion Empire on its subjects. That didn't begin to cover the decades of terror and pain they'd inflicted as they annihilated dissidents, scoured worlds of their resources and plundered their cultures and treasures.

The Zact didn't come to new worlds as conquerors but as saviors; bringing law and therefore peace to a galaxy left lawless by the power vacuum left by the Empire's fall at their hands. They provided science, food, culture—the means to become something greater. How could that possibly harm anyone? Every history lesson she'd ever been taught said the Zact were welcomed with open arms by everyone but the power mad X-laws and the most backward and suspicious backwater worlds.

She had to find out what it was Yang was so angry about—to fix the misunderstanding or if the unthinkable was true, make amends.

Besides the doors that led into this room, two ladders on either side led upward while another set of doors led further on. Jaune picked the ladder on the left and swiftly scaled it, leading them into a cluttered chamber filled with equipment lockers, supply crates and a single heavy set of airlock doors.

It didn't take a lifetime in space to recognize a shuttle embarkation bay when you saw one.

Ruby and Yang were already there, camped out as if they were expecting a tactical assault from a dozen fully armed and armored Zact Marines. Ruby had arranged crates at the back of the room to both grant her cover and to give her a place to unfold what was now clearly no mere plasma rifle. The telescoping barrel and stock were both fully deployed as well as the tripod at the end of the anti-armor heavy plasma cannon's barrel. The younger sister was sighting on the airlock doors like she expected to have to blow the wings off a blau-fly two miles distant.

Also behind cover, but on the opposite side of the room (the better to make the enemy split their fire), Yang was hunkered down and holding both her handcannons akimbo, ready to blow some very large holes in whoever or whatever came through the airlock.

Jaune nodded to both women and touched his hand to the wall next to the ladder. Another smuggler's panel opened and an actuator extended an armor vest and a light pulse rifle. He put his pistol in a holster at his side and proceeded to don the armor.

“Is every wall in your ship full of weapons?” Pyrrha asked. She honestly never seen anything like it, and she'd participated in boarding actions against actual weapons smugglers.

“Welcome to freespace,” was all he said as the armor vest cinched around him. He reached into the cavity and pulled out a mask. It wasn't as terrifying as the Xiphos pilots' wolf helms, but it was still discomfiting: looking like it was pounded out of pig iron with big, black bug eyes for a sensor array, an exposed respirator that looked like a set of clenched needle teeth at the mouth, and spurs of no discernible purpose forming a horned crown around the forehead. Any sense of symmetry was broken by a pair of golden arcs inlaid into it so they crossed the left eye down to the cheek.

Even more discomfiting was the wholly organic way its plates and rubberized collar seemed to move to swallow up his face as he donned it. There was a metallic squawk as the external speakers came on, which didn't help. When Jaune spoke next, the respirator and speakers combined to make it sound like the bark and whine of a hellhound. “Game face is on. Connecting to docking bay comms.”

A control panel next to the airlock doors came to life, scrolling through diagnostics on the ship as well as information from the sensors including detected living crew and cargo. After a moment. Jaune started speaking again. “Attention crew of the Atlasian ECM craft. This is Captain Jaune Arc of the Freespace ship Beacon. As you no doubt already know by now, we have your helm, security and environmental controls. For all intents and purpose, you are our prisoners and you are far out of range for possible attempted rescue.

“In fact, like I kept trying to tell you; you are far outside of Zact space. Wherever your base was trying to bloom, you overshot by at least a factor of ten, maybe as much as a hundred. And believe me: there's no one here in Freespace willing to give anyone a lift back into Zact space. Long story short: you're stuck here. Lucky for you, My cr... most of my crew doesn't have an appetite for killing you and I really don't want prisoners either. So here's my offer: put down your weapons and surrender. In exchange, we'll take you with us to the nearest station where hopefully the man in charge will have work for you. The safe approach distance to Vale station is eleven days sublight, so we just have to coexist for just under two weeks. Pilot First Class Nikos has already accepted my terms and is here to confirm the legitimacy of this offer.

“Those are our incredibly generous terms considering your showing up and trying to arrest us just cost us fuel food and funds to stay independent for the next year at least. Take it or leave it.” He broke the connection then and the four of them stood in silence watching the console for the reply.

After a long minute, Pyrrha had to ask; “What if they 'leave it'?”

Jaune shrugged. “I suppose we lock down this airlock and make them the problem of whoever buys their ship.”

The comms crackled and a stern female voice spoke. “This is Adjudicator Weiss Schnee. I suppose I am now the Commander of the remaining Atlasian forces in the area. I wish to open negotiations on the terms of our surrender. First: for the duration of our stay on your ship, we will be treated as guests, not prisoners.”

“Oh like hell are you going to have the run of the ship!” Yang roared.

Jaune muted the feed on his end. “How were we even going to manage that, Yang? Side from locking them in their ship or Shuttle 2 with the dockside controls, every room on this boat locks from the inside. Do you volunteer to lose two weeks of sleep to keep them locked up in the spare crew quarters?”

It was almost enough to make Yang take her sights off the docking doors. “You're really pushing it, Arc. We could just pull their O2 right now and be done with it.”

“Yang...” Ruby took her face away from her weapon's eyepiece to look at her sister. “We can't just kill them. They didn't really do anything to us. I mean what we do is all kinds of illegal, so it's only fair someone should probably try to arrest us...”

“You don't get it Ruby. Just leave this to me.”

“Not if you're going to go around killing people in cold blood,” Ruby said, standing her ground.

Yang ground her teeth. “I'm trying to protect you!”

“Mom and dad always tried to protect us and they never suffocated people who didn't do anything!” Ruby snapped back. “Who would do something like that?”

The words hit Yang with almost physical force. Her eyes widened and her jaw worked, trying to force out a retort, but none came because she had no defense for that. Taking them prisoners, killing them in a fair fight, these were all justifiable. But shutting down their ships environmentals and life support? That was the stuff of bandits. And X-Laws.

And the Zact.

Her hands were trembling and the weight of her hand cannons seemed like it was finally making itself known. “Don't say that, Ruby. Don't say that!”

“Then don't do it!” Ruby shouted. “I don't know what's got you so afraid, but this isn't like you.” Her expression softened. “You're always looking out for me, so let me look out for you just this once and tell me what's going on.”

When it looked like Yang was having a hard time finding something to say, Jaune stepped in. “It's complicated Ruby. We'll all have a discussion about this later. In the meantime: Yang head down and grab Nora and Ren for the lounge. We're going to have a full crew meeting in about ten minutes.”

“Jaune.” Yang said sharply.

“Yang. Please. We don't have better options.” Jaune looked at her through the bleak expression of his mask, but the pleading was still clear in his voice.

Another tense moment went by before Yang jammed her weapons back in their holsters. “Fine. But when they turn on you, I'm taking Ruby and bolting. To every hell in the galaxy with you.” That said, she stomped her way down the ladder.

Jaune groaned, but then unmuted the mic. “We agree to that term. What are your other terms?”

“It took you long enough,” Weiss replied almost instantly. “That was not so unreasonable a demand that it required that long to deliberate.”

“Do you know this woman personally?” Jaune asked Pyrrha, who shook her head. “So there's no telling if she's this unreasonable normally or if it's the fact that she's backed into a corner.”

“I heard that!” Weiss's voice said.

Jaune clenched the fist of his free hand. “You were meant to. Your other terms?”

Weiss hemmed and hawed a bit before saying, “You will not sell my ECM craft or the Xiphos you captured. I will not be responsible for Atlasian technology winding up in enemy hands.”

“Do you have any idea how much you and your pals cost us when you bloomed in, tried to arrest us, and then atomized that huge cash cow of a derelict? We barely going to make enough off this to justify the trip out here. If one of our fences wants it, we are going to sell everything. Weapon systems, engines, hull plating. If you brought toiletries on board, I will sell those too. I've got crew to feed, water and xenon to buy, and debts to way too many people with bigger, meaner ships to pay off. No deal.”

“Then you have no deal with us then,” replied Weiss. “Step on foot on this ship and you will be shot dead.”

There was an electronic squawk and a new voice came on, this one nearly monotone, almost bored. “This woman does not speak for me. I accept all terms of surrender.”

“Wha—how did you break into this channel? And how dare you say I don't speak for you. I am your Commander! In fact, if there really are no other Zact or Atlasian forces in this system, then I am Supreme Commander.”

“Of three people. One who's been captured, and one who is yourself. What exactly are you going to do to me? Court martial me with? Oh no, you need a triumverate for that and I'm not going to find myself guilty.”

Weiss snarled. “T-this is insubordination! I'll see you busted down to... to...”

“I'm an envoy pilot already. Because Founders and Makers forbid Atlas has the Empire's 'mistakes' in officer positions even if they tested for full qualifications to pilot capitol ships.”

“I....grah! Captain Arc, I have a new term. I will surrender unconditionally as long as Pilot First Class Blake Belladonna is not extended the guest privileges I negotiated earlier.”

Jaune rolled his eyes inside his mask. “Granted. Are we done now?”

“Done.” Weiss sounded incredibly proud of herself. “Also, I am officially dishonorably discharging Pilot Belladonna from the Atlasian Fleet.”

It was a very good thing that Yang wasn't there, Jaune decided. While Pyrrha and apparently Blake were proving to be way more reasonable than the standard image of the Zact, Adjudicator Schnee was living up to every bad thing said about them. Except murder. But then the day was young.

“Whatever.” He finally said. “Ren? You there buddy?”

“Right here, Captain.”

“Blow the hatch if you will.”

“On it in three, two, one. Blowing hatch.” A powerful hiss preceded the airlock opening and then the ECM ship's own hatch being forced open. Against the internal lighting of the adjoining airlock stood a tall, lean woman with long, black hair wearing white Atlasian flight suit. Seated on the bench normally meant for marines going through decompression was a woman in the formal blue and white officer's uniform of the Atlasian fleet. She had her arms crossed in defiance where her companion had hers raised.

Taking a shooters stance and sighting with his pistol Jaune ordered, “Please step into our airlock.”

The black haired woman did as commanded, keeping her hands up as she did so. As she drew closer, it became clear that she was something other than the Imperial stock that populated most of the universe, but also something different from spacelings like Jaune or Pyrrha. Slightly glowing amber eyes with slit pupils like a cat's surveyed the scene inside the embarkation room.

“Blake Belladonna, I presume?” Jaune asked, “Formerly of the Atlasian Fleet?”

“Yes I am,” she said with an affirming nod.

“You're an amilacara.” Jaune tried to wrap his tongue around the proper term. The Empire and the Zact that followed them usually just used 'castoff' to describe the descendants of the first generation of genetic experiments that eventually created the spacelings. While spacelings had artificial genomes, amilacara were spliced with the genetics of whatever fauna that particular scientist liked the characteristics of.

Blake nodded again, but then added, “I prefer faunus, but that's better than the other word, Captain.”

Beyond her, Jaune could see the officer—Weiss's--mounting annoyance at the exchange. He was not above pushing her buttons just a little more. “I can imagine how you've been treated. I heard a little bit just now, but I've heard stories from my parents. Doesn't sound like it would take much for you to renounce Atlas, huh? Especially now that you're out of their reach.”

“No, it certainly wouldn't take much.”

“Well, I image Yang would be thrilled to hear that and be okay with you at least. Buuuut we already have a pilot. Any other special skills?”

The faunus woman started counting off on her fingers. “Small craft repair, navigation—those something you need?” Jaune shook his head. “Well... I can cook.”

“I do all the cooking on this boat,” Jaune said just a little too defensively.

“Okay...” Blake gave him an odd look. “Before I got drafted, I was raised on Kyltus—one of the Ex-Law planets before Atlas captured it. I was in a gang there and I was pretty good at breaking and entering. Is that—”

“And you're in. For a thieving band of scum and low-lives, we are embarrassingly bad at anything that requires subtlety and we're starting to get a reputation.”

“Mostly because of Nora.” Ren pointed out over the comms.

“Yay!” Nora added from somewhere deep in the ship.

That was the last straw for Weiss who leapt to her feet and stormed into Beacon's airlock. “Now that is enough! Insubordination is unforgivable enough, but this—this is treason! Technically I would be within my right to exec...” she froze in place as the unmistakable red line of a laser tracer lanced into view to center directly over her left breast. “cute... oh.”

“Yeah, you better not move because I can intensify the beam and burn a hole right through your heart literally any second,” Ruby sang out.

“Commander Schnee, it's not too late to take me up on my offer,” said Jaune. “Though if you want to take Ruby's I won't be jealous.”

Weiss was steaming by now and her ire swung from the impassive Blake to Pyrrha. “I thought the blood of House Nikos ran thicker than this,” she spat. “Standing by passively while your Commander is under threat? Do something!”

Pyrrha winced at the implied accusations, but held firm. “There's nothing we can do. No doubt you've checked your navigation by now and you know what they're saying is the truth: we are nowhere near Zact space, much less Atlas. Everyone in this sector hates us and no one is going to take us home. We have no choice but to go along because offer we're going to get out here. So doing nothing is the best service I can do for you.”

The two women stared each other down for a long while before finally the Adjudicator's shoulders sank in defeat. “Very well. In the face of a total mutiny of all the forces in the sector, I surrender.”

“Finally.” Jaune muttered. “Alright then: permission to board. Welcome to the Beacon. Ren, button up the ECM ship for me, then start bloom calculations to the approach radius around Vale Station. Once that's done, all hands to the lounge. We need to have a meeting before we leave this place.”

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“So you're the traitor.” Yang was back in full form, if not a bit less aggressive now, doing her best to loom over Blake. “And somehow Jaune thinks you can be trusted?”

“I'm a traitor toward the other side, remember?” Blake deadpanned.

Yang folded her arms under her chest as if showing off her bosom was going to intimidate the faunus. “And what's keeping you from flipping on us the second it's to your advantage?”

One slim eyebrow rose. They were waiting for Nora and Ren to join the rest of the crew and their 'guests' in the lounge, sitting around the table. “Do you or any of the other have a problem with faunus?”

“No.”

“And did you notice how the 'other side' is just one bossy little bean counter?”

“Yes.”

Blake stared at her for a few seconds hoping something would come together on its own. When it didn't and Yang's stare remained equal parts belligerent and blank, she sighed. “Then what would even be the point of me turning on you then?”

The blank stare turned completely belligerent. “Well I don't know, now do I. That's why it'll be completely unexpected when you slit all our throats and fly off in the night, huh?”

“I give up.” Blake buried her face in her hands. “Think whatever you want. You captain made me crew, so you're just going to have to deal with it.”

Yang scowled and sat back, folded her arms behind her head. “Yeah, yeah. I just wish I could deal with it by sending you three dirty Zact on a little walk outside—suits optional.”

“Whatever.” Blake looked away to survey the rest of the lounge. Ruby was at the end of the table, opposite Blake, field stripping her rifle for cleaning. Jaune was watching Yang, who was sitting catty-corner to Blake and beside him. Looking like a mother expecting a tantrum, he had a pistol sitting on the table in front of him in case something started. Pyrrha was sitting next to him, casting fervent glances past him at Yang, clearly expecting the blonde woman to snap and attack. Weiss was alone on the other side of the table, nearer to Ruby, brooding.

One set of doors opened, admitting Nora and a man with dark hair set off by a single magenta lock who could only be the pilot, Ren. “Sorry it took so long,” said Ren, “There were some odd errors being returned by the bloom nav. Some sort of outside interference I managed to trace to the remains of the Ex-Law ship and isolate.”

With Nora skipping along beside him, he came to the table and sat down across from Jaune and next to Weiss. “I think that's what forced the Atlasian base to bloom so far off course.”

“Impossible!” Weiss almost shrieked. “Bloom navigation is hardened against all forms of Electronic Warfare. One simply cannot tamper with them from outside the ship.”

“That's just it,” said Ren, “Whatever this was, it was sending ghost scanner images to make the local stars look different to the navigation system. Everything was external. The implications of the Ex-Laws having this and a ship that could make a mobile base cut and run from it... they're terrifying.”

“The existence of that technology at all is terrifying,” Blake spoke up. “It would mean no one could ever trust bloom drives ever again, because an enemy, a rival or just some sick monster could make you bloom directly into a star. It would mean the end of intergalactic travel as we know it.”

It was Ruby who broke the heavy silence that followed that. “That... doesn't sound good.”

Jaune rested his forehead on his knuckles. “As if we needed more complications. I'm... I'm honestly too tired to even try. We'll tell Ozpin about this when we get to Vale station. Let him sort it out. Taking on the whole of the Ex-Laws isn't something we can do alone anyway. Would you mind writing up everything you found so I can give it to him, Ren?”

The only other male crewman aboard the Beacon shook his head. “Not at all.”

“Thanks.” Jaune said with a grateful nod. “Alright, on to something we can do something about. Not gonna call them 'prisoners', especially since I offered one of them a job, but I'm sure everyone will feel just a little bit better if I took a few security measures.”

“You're ny-ja right we would,” Yang added.

Ignoring her, Jaune continued. “First off: no free weapons. If your personal arms aren't on your person, they need to be secured and locked up at all times. Second, I'm putting lockdown restrictions in place. Only crew is allowed on the flight or gun decks, the engine room, shuttle docks or the cargo bay unless escorted by armed crew.”

“Well are least you're not being completely stupid about all this.” Yang chimed in again.

Jaune made it a point to visibly brace himself. “And third, we're changing bunk assignments because I don't want the newcomers alone. Ren and I can bunk in my quarters—”

“Nope!” That was Nora immediately latched on to Ren's arm as if protecting against someone physically taking him from her.

A long suffering sigh left Jaune. “Nora, come on, Not this again. Look, there's eight people on the ship and only four usable crew quarters. There's only two men here, so it make sense for me and Ren to—”

“I said 'nope'.” Nora folded her arms. “It's in my contract.”

Jaune looked to Ren for help, but the other man just shrugged. “In fact, sharing a room with me is the only thing in her contract. Technically, you don't even have to pay or feed her.” He said that while giving Jaune a look that promised long suffering if he ever actually exercised that technicality.

“Right...” Jaune heaved a shrug. “Okay, so with that in mind, Blake since you're the one Yang is least likely to either goad into a fight or take exception to, you'll bunk with her.” The two women locked eyes, two lionesses sizing one another up. Blake nodded.

Yang grunted and shot a glare at Jaune. “Hold on. You don't mean to make Ruby bunk with one of them? That is totally out of the question.”

“Look, there's no other way around it if we want to keep an eye on the newcomers. Besides, I was going to have her bunk with the Adjudicator. She's clearly a career officer and therefore pretty useless without soldiers to shoot her guns for her.”

“Hey!” Weiss protested. “Is this how you treat guests?”

Jaune found the energy to smirk at her. If one good thing had come out of the hideous cascade failure that was this day, he could at least find pleasure in having a high born officer to torment. “This is how we treat crew, actually. We don't usually have guests.”

Weiss pouted. “I cannot sleep in the same room as someone who almost shot me!”

Ruby scooted her seat around the corned of the table and ambushed Weiss by throwing her arm around the Zact officer's shoulders. “Aw, I was just painting you with the laser sight to terrify you into surrender. It's no biggie.”

“Unhand me!” Weiss quailed, trying and failing to get Ruby's arm off her as she laughed and babbled on about how they were going to have fun rooming together.

“See?” Jaune asked Yang. “She can't even fight Ruby off hand to hand. Frankly, she's safer with the Adjudicator than she is with you and your sleeping with guns under your pillow.”

While Yang growled and grumbled under her breath, Pyrrha spoke up. “Then would that mean I'll be bunking with you?”

He shook his head. “No. Regardless of situation, I don't want anyone to be more uncomfortable than they need to. My quarters have their own head, so there won't be much of a problem locking you in during night cycles.”

She gave him a curious if not sympathetic look. “Then where will you sleep?”

Jaune just shrugged. “Flight deck? Shuttle Two? I've slept worse places.”

After too-long a silence, Pyrrha spoke again. “I don't want to put you out. And the dorms at the Flight Academy were unisex and six to a room, so this won't be anything I haven't dealt with before.”

“If you're sure it's alright.” Jaune replied, scratching the back of his head. He reminded himself it was only two weeks. He could keep himself from doing anything embarrassing for either of them for two weeks.

“I'll be fine.”

Yang grunted again and stood up. “If we're done forgetting who our enemies are, I'm going to go lock up my guns.”

“Yeah... dismissed. Everyone should show their new bunkmates to their new quarters. Ren, Nora? Please run the ship through full diagnostics and have us ready to bloom inside the hour.”

“Aye, Aye captain!” Nora threw a clumsy salute before scampering off toward engineering. Ren gave a nod and was off as well. Soon, almost everyone was gone from the room save two.

Jaune stood next to Pyrrha, watching the fighter pilot quietly staring at the surface of the table, one finger tracing an old scratch. “The others... they don't seem as affected by what just happened as you.”

There was a long silence before Pyrrha saw fit to reply. “Adjudicator Schnee is a new transfer on top of being an officer. She's had neither time nor need to bond with anyone. Blake is a cast-off—pardon my language, I just don't know a better term. To be painfully honest, she's probably well aware that she'll be treated much better here than anywhere in the Zact core worlds.”

Hunching her shoulders, she continued studying the table. “Since it may be years before anyone even knows what happened to the Paladin, I'm alone in mourning those who were lost.”

Jaune drew in a long breath and placed a hand on her shoulder. “I may not have known them but—”

“Please stop.” Moving faster than Jaune could react to, Pyrrha knocked his hand off her shoulder and stood, turning to lean back against the table. She avoided his gaze, looking anywhere but him. “You aren't helping things.”

Completely at a loss as to how to respond, Jaune gaped for a second. “I'm... sorry?”

“I know you are. I know you wanted to save those people. I know that you're sorry they died even if they were your enemies. And I know that you're going above and beyond to help us. That's the problem. If you were just the monster who killed my mentor, I could focus myself on getting revenge, but... but you aren't.”

Tears were starting to form in her eyes. “And now I'm starting to wonder if what you've told me isn't true... if the Zact... if I haven't been on the wrong side all along. I thought I lost everything today, but it might be that everything I've ever accomplished has been all for nothing.”

“Hey.” Tentatively, Jaune stepped forward and put his hands on her upper arms again. Tears were flowing freely from her eyes now and she was still refusing to meet his eyes. He stooped to put himself in her line of sight, finally locking eyes with her. “Hey. Look, I... don't really know what to say. But I do know what it's like to have lost everything—there was a time I didn't have this ship or this crew. I know the feeling of being alone, wishing you had something you could just lose yourself in....”

He sighed, seeing that his words didn't seem to be helping. “I just want to let you know that you aren't alone. As long as you're on my boat if there's anything you need, just ask—” he was cut off as he was pulled into a fierce embrace.

Pyrrha didn't say anything and Jaune didn't try to coax anything out of her. They just stood there for several long minutes, taking solace in one another against the cold indifference of space.

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Less than half an hour later, the diagnostics were done and the Beacon bloomed out, headed for Vale Station.

A few hours after that, the void rippled some six thousand miles from the epicenter of the derelict's explosion. From the vast nothingness emerged a ship about twice the size of the Beacon. Of Ex-Law make, it was built in two sections: the upper section shaped like a stretched horseshoe with the lower half shaped like a vast, legless beetle.

“Subspace cocoon has now fully been retracted. Heat damage was minimal across all systems, Captain.” The first mate of the Ex-Law scout Wilt was a cast-off woman with a set of short, branching antlers. “Another successful test of another of Dr. Volero's designs.”

The captain of the Wilt, another cast-off with a pair of bull horns sprouting from his forehead, clasped his hands in front of him as he surveyed the read-outs from his console. “Too bad it was at the cost of the White Fang. Three years of construction on top of all the research and development... The only positive is that the explosion annihilated all evidence of it—as well as any Atlasian witnesses.”

He contemplated for a moment before asking, “What of the ship that gave us forewarning about the xenon explosion? Was it destroyed as well?”

The first mate shook her head. “It was outside of the blast radius. In all likelihood, it survived.”

“Then it's possible there's still a witness to the White Fang's test run. Scan for residual bloom patterns. We can't let word get out about the Fang's new technology. Not yet. Inform the men: our objective before we return home is the annihilation or capture of Captain Jaune Arc and everyone with him.”


	2. First Impressions Part 1

Jaune kept the Beacon on Vale Station's standard time, and for its crew the raid on the derelict had been during their 'night', so by the time arrangements had been made for the new crew member and guests, it was past their normal bed time.

Yang drew the line at aiding and abetting Zact (or former-Zact) comfort, and so it fell to Jaune and Ruby to go down to aft storage and drag up the cots they used for the rare passengers and slightly less rare temporary crew members that sometimes boarded the Beacon.

Once sleeping accommodations had been made, the crew said their good nights and individually grabbed the odd nutrition bar from the ship's lounge before turning in.

The crew quarters were located just off the ship's lounge opposite the hallway that led to the bridge. There was a ladder on either side of the hallway with ladders leading both up and down into hatches where the quarters were situated.

The captain's quarters, on the other hand, were access via either of two doors on either side of the metal staircase leading up to the bridge. Inside, Pyrrha found herself looking at a room like she'd never seen before.

Actual wood—not the pressed particulate material, but real carved and shaped wood—furniture abounded: in the frame and headboard of a bed large enough to sleep three star fighter cadets, in a vanity featuring a mirror as long as a person was tall, in a wardrobe and dresser set bolted to the far wall, a writing desk tucked against the stern wall, and in the nightstand next to the aforementioned bed. It made the place smell a pleasant kind of odd she'd never experienced before.

Though mismatched, everything was tasteful and of a quality that would have made it costly even were they not in the void where wood and its accompanying weight was at a premium. The only evidence that the room was even on a ship were the ceramic walls, the magnetic bearings on the chair to keep it firmly on the floor no matter how the ship maneuvered, and an odd black plate mounted to the bed's headboard. It didn't match what she knew of Jaune Arc, which put her instantly on guard and shamed her for being so easily taken in by his earlier demeanor.

Having allowed her to enter first, Jaune didn't notice her hackles rise and instead wandered about the room, boots falling heavy on the rough, standard ceramic floor. His first stop was a place in the bow-facing wall where there was a concave chamber with a grate in the floor. “Special of the captain's quarters: private shower.”

He stepped in and tapped a panel on the wall, causing a curved divider to slide out of the wall, concealing all but his silhouette. Another tap opened it. Then he turned around and pulled on a handle, dragging what at first looked like an extra-deep drawer from the wall. “The commode. The water cycles through the cooling reservoir of the forward lance.” With that, he kicked the 'drawer' closed.

“Until we reach Vale, consider my quarters your own. You're around my height, so my clothes should fit...” his eyes did not stray from her face. Really. “Mostly. So help yourself.” Before she could reply to any of this, he trotted over to the nightstand and opened the drawer there. This one, mercifully, wasn't a toilet.

From it, he took a tablet that had seen far too many years to be top of the line and placed it on the bed. “I've got some books on here, some vids and games. You're welcome to anything that's not behind a password since I figure you might not be in the mood to sleep much tonight. Alternatively...”

Once more he delved into the drawer, this time coming up with a long necked, orb-bodied bottle with an orange and red label a third full of transparent orange liquid. “Some of the Old Tamsnin Fire might help. I haven't had use of it for a while—crew's safe, attempts on my life lately have been largely incidental instead of targeted, ships running—so you're welcome to it.”

He didn't seem fazed by her silence as he straightened up with a slight groan and sat the bottle on the bed as well before starting to walk toward the wretched little cot set up in the corner of the room.

For the first time, since they'd come in, Pyrrha spoke. “Where are you going?”

“To bed.” he said offhand as he started to pull off the armor he'd been wearing since they forced Weiss out of the ECM ship. “Long day tomorrow. Stripping ships for sale, making contact with Vale, fending off Yang.”

“Why are you moving toward the cot? I'm the guest here.”

Jaune dropped the armor on top of the chest of drawers and pulled open the second drawer, rummaging around inside it. “Exactly. You're a guest. My aunt would smack me right in the face if I let a guest sleep on one of these shitty cots while I sack out in style.”

“It's fine, really,” said Pyrrha, not budging from where she stood in the middle of the room. “My bunk on the Paladin wasn't much more than the cot. The one I had at academy was worse.”

“Well,” Jaune said, not turning around as he unbuttoned his shirt, leaving himself wearing a sweat-stained gray tank top. “Like I keep telling you, you're not in Zact space any more. You're in Freespace. And while not a lot of us do, some of us have manners.”

She was eyeing him with suspicion, but when he shucked his trousers, leaving himself in a set of shorts, she finally looked away. “Why are you doing this?” She finally asked, “Why not just kill us or imprison us. You put your entire crew in danger, then put yourself in danger for your crew. Why? Why turn down comfort for an absolute stranger? A stranger who tried to kill you twice today? A stranger, who worked for the people you thought were bad guys? The monsters.”

Her voice was firm and her voice even though her confusion and frustration were evident. In truth, she still wanted some reason to hate him.

Jaune went still for a second in the middle of pulling on a loose pair of sweat pants. Then he slowly finished dressing and spoke up. “Pyrrha... monsters don't ask questions like that. They don't cry over lost loved ones. The Zact as a government? They're evil and do evil things. But the people? They're still people. You're still a person. It's easy for Yang to forget that when all she's seen at the ones carrying out the evil, but I wouldn't be alive today without there being kind Zact in the world. Good Zact.”

He turned to face her, his expression fully serious. “That's why I stuck my neck out for you and the others. You've all got just as much chance of being decent people as the ones I've known. Plus, like I said: I've seen enough people die since long before tonight.”

Taking advantage of her mulling over what he'd said, he stepped around her and lay down on the cot, folding his arms behind his head to make up for the lacking pillow.

“This still doesn't make any sense,” said Pyrrha at length, watching him watch the ceiling. “Maybe you don't want me to die, but you can't think I deserve all this special treatment. Blake's a member of your crew now and she's not sleeping on a sumptuous mattress tonight.”

“It's been a couple years and I still don't think I deserve it either. But... came with the captain's quarters,” Jaune shrugged. “As for what you deserve...” His previously light tone grew somber. “You're the only one who cried for them.”

Pyrrha's eyebrows disappeared into her hair. “E-excuse me?”

Still staring at the ceiling, Jaune shrugged again, “I can understand Blake. There was probably no one on the Paladin she had any love lost for. But Weiss? Let's just say I've got some feelings about officers and how they should treat the people they're responsible for. Even then, they could have said something or at least shed just one tear. Empathy—my aunt would say—it's more valuable out here in the void, not less. People think they can just turn hard, but hard things are just brittle. They break.”

Wringing her hands, Pyrrha started pacing. “I shouldn't have. Cried I mean. Or let an en... someone I didn't know see. It's unbecoming.”

He glanced aside to her. “What's unbecoming is not caring. Your commander? The one who killed everyone to spite me? That's unbecoming. You reacted appropriately. Remember that if you don't remember anything else about this ship after two weeks.”

They stared at each other for a long, silent moment, a quiet battle of wills. Finally, Pyrrha's shoulders slumped and she nodded slowly. “I suppose I should thank you. And apologize for appearing to be so ungrateful.”

Jaune closed his eyes and tried to do his best to get comfortable. “I won't hold it against you. You've had a hard day. So have we all.” Rolling over slightly, he brought one arm from behind his head and draped it over his eyes. “If you need anything, I'm right here. Otherwise? Have a good night.”

Left with really not other choice unless she wanted to keep pestering him, Pyrrha moved over to the bed and sat down, picking up the tablet and actively avoiding the liquor. “Good night, Jaune.”

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It had taken Jaune a month to get used to the gentle warble that passed for the wake-up alarm in the captain's quarters. For all his ability to communicate with the ship's subsystems, there simply wasn't a sound file compatible with the ancient antique speakers in the room for him to replace it with. So, he just had to train himself to wake up to it.

And wake up he did, at precisely eight in the morning Vale time. Muscle memory made his hand immediately slap the wall above his head.

“Good morning, beautiful,” he muttered in a sleep-addled voice, “how'd you sleep?”

“E-excuse me?”

For a second. Just for a singular, tense second... all of Jaune's thoughts stopped as if slamming into an invincible, immovable wall. It was too early for coherency, so when his neurons started firing again, the first reaction was something along the lines of wondering how the ship was talking back.

Then some level of sapience returned to Captain Jaune Arc, and he realized a few things in a rush. One was that his hand was pressed against neutral ceramic instead of cold graphene. Another was that he realized that voice was from an actual person in his room. And finally, he remembered Pyrrha and the whole business that happened the night before.

Wakefulness had never struck him so hard before.

Sitting up faster than was truly necessary, he put his feet on the floor and shot a wild-eyed look toward where he sussed out his bed to be. Pyrrha was sitting with her back up against her headboard, having neither gotten beneath the covers, nor changed out of her flight suit and was holding the tablet. The best word for the expression she wore was 'scandalized'.

“I-I was talking to the Beacon.” He blurted out. In a fair and just world, the words would have stopped there. Such a world was a fiction far away from his real life thought. “B-because I talk to machines. Er, I was a lonely kid and kind of made believe they were my friend and... and I never really grew out of it.”

By now, his face was heating up and he knew just what a pathetic picture he was painting of himself. Somewhere in his brain part of him stood up, still drunk on sleep and bellowed 'LETS FIX THIS!' in the same way others might say 'hold my beer'. And the words kept coming.

“I wasn't calling you beautiful. N-not that you're not, but... Founders and Makers why am I not shutting up!” He wrapped on his forehead with his knuckles and bent double with a groan. “I'm sorry about that. Not used to guests.”

When he looked up, he saw that she was fighting to keep her lips from twitching with involuntary mirth at his little outburst. There was a good sign, he decided, especially taking into account the dark bags under her eyes indicating she'd had significantly less sleep than he had.

Getting to his feet, he stretched to make his spine pop. “Well I normally only mortify myself this much during breakfast. I hope you enjoyed the private sneak peek.” moving over to the big, fancy chest of drawers, he started pulling out clothes. Even though he felt he knew the answer, he asked if only to make conversation. “Did you sleep well?”

“A few hours, I suppose. I'm honestly glad to have slept at all,” she admitted. “Thank you for the loan of your tablet. It was nice to have a diversion.”

Jaune gave her a gentle smile from over the parcel of clothes he'd collected. “Any time. I wish I could do more to help.”

There was a long pause before Pyrrha spoke again, her tone very different. “...please stop saying things like that.” When he looked at he askance, she refused to meet his eye. “I am not ungrateful for all you've done. If you were anyone else, I would do everything in my power to pay you back as a token of appreciation...”

“...but that would feel like a betrayal of your CO if you did that for me. I understand.” Jaune split the clothes he'd been collecting into two piles placing one next to her on the bed, and the other up next to the headboard. Then he reached up and pressed his bare hand to the graphine plate above the bed. “Does it help if you consider it me doing penance? A blood price? There's some planets that do that yo know.”

Pyrrha moved to stand from the bed while he was interfacing with the ship and busied herself going through the clothes he'd loaned her. “I'm well aware. Not quite sure how I feel about having one owed to me.” The garb was utilitarian: tan trousers with black suspenders, a white cotton button down shirt and a supple brown leather vest. There was also red neckerchief with an two embroidered silver 'G's' on it.

After a moment, Jaune snorted, then blinked in alarm. “Oh. Sorry. That wasn't about what you said. Ruby already volunteered herself on the duty roster to evaluate and start stripping the Adjudicator's ship. Little lady just loves ships. Especially weapons systems. It's kind of surprising how much she knows about all this stuff being self taught and all.”

Even though she knew he was just offering her a way out of the previous conversation, Pyrrha took it gladly. “You let the crew assign themselves to the duty roster?” That was a completely foreign concept to her. Duty rosters were meant to be filled out with assignments before one even woke up in her experience.

“Sometimes it's just easier that way. Ruby and Nora usually know more about what needs to be done in what order than me anyway, so why argue? We usually discuss assignments at breakfast anyway. Speaking of which, I'm going to leave so you can get dressed, then we're going to fix breakfast for the crew—it's kind of a special occasion because we're having actual food.”

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“I thought you were going to show me how to be captain. Shouldn't be be going up the the command deck to learn to steer? Or manning the guns?”

Eight year old Jaune Arc stomped along after his caretaker. Ozpin told him to call her 'Aunt', but it was really clear she disliked it as much as he did. Not only that, but after just a week on board her ship, it was also obvious that she did not like children as a rule and was working hard to keep her temper in check.

And at eight years old, Jaune was more than willing to push those buttons to see what would happen.

His not-aunt adjusted her glasses—one of her many tells when it came to her anger. “Steering the ship is the duty of the pilot. Manning the spinal and ventral weapons is a task for gunners and/or security. I have dedicated gunners because I fly directly under the Valean flag. No, the task of captain is significantly more involved and vital, Mr. Arc.”

 

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Not all of breakfast was comprise of 'real' food, but Jaune did the best with what he'd managed to pull off the derelict before the Atlasians arrived minus what he felt better served the ship as trade fodder. In the end, he chopped up two of the eight peppers and added that along with onion flake and some shredded cheese (not from the wheel he'd scavenged for Ren) to the egg-style protein complex, which he cooked into something resembling omelets, and paired that with toast made in the over, sausages printed from a protein matrix with added spices, tall glasses of orange juice from concentrate spiked with vitamin supplements to make up for their usual lack of fresh fruit and vegetables.

He was working tirelessly at the range in the lounge with Pyrrha watching in fascination (having never seen anyone cook by hand before) when the first crew members started to emerge from their slumber. Blake arrived first looking red-eyed and irritated as she was urged forward by Yang.

“You could have just locked me in the room and let me sleep while you went to have breakfast.” Still dressed in her flight suit, she was grumbling as they sat down at the table.

Yang snorted derisively. “Are you kidding? Do you know how many weapons are in me and Ruby's room? There's no way I'm letting you be alone in there. Plus, I've got to keep my eye on you.”

Blake looked to Jaune with bleary eyes. “Permission to have an eye kept on me while napping in one of those chairs, captain?” She nodded toward a corner of the room where a little sitting area had been arranged with a sofa and some arm chairs.

“Denied,” Jaune said to her obvious annoyance. “Not until after breakfast. If you're going to be a member of this crew, you're going to have to adjust to our clock. Plus, breakfast is where we all touch base.”

“Speaking of which, I'm still wondering why we aren't spacing the Zacts.”

“That's a motion that'll have to wait until the others get here.” Jaune said, wearily.

Running steps and nervous babble preceded Ruby's arrival dragging Weiss behind her by the hand. The Adjudicator was complaining at such a rate that it was impossible to keep up, though not hard to see the reasons for some of it: Like Jaune with Pyrrha, Ruby had offered clothes to her 'guest'. In this case a black tank top that was too short on the slightly taller woman, and a set of cargo pants that were at once too baggy and too short, forcing her to physically hold them up, but not too high up.

“This is not how you treat guests! I demand to know what you've done with my uniform and why we're awake at this horrific hour. And also what is that utterly offensive odor? Is someone cooking unprocessed protein?”

Jaune gave her a level look. “I can make an exception and cook some of that up just for you, Princess. Otherwise, we're having the fanciest meal this ship's seen since we pulled the Larids End job. But you're welcome to gnaw a nutrition block or suck down a survival ration if you'd prefer.”

As he was speaking, Nora skipped in with Ren following silently behind. “Good morning everyone!” She cried out over the other conversation. It's always a good morning when there's ships to fix and nothing's going wrong that'll kill us!”

“And coming from the engineer, that's the best news of the day,” said Jaune. He started dishing out the meal. Contrary to what Weiss said, the addition of peppers and spices made the food smell quite appealing to most of them and even Blake managed to emerge from her drowsy shell to enjoy it.

Weiss turned up her nose until Ruby presented her with the actual alternatives: a soft, translucent red ration bar and gray-brown block of nutrition loaf. The complaints evaporated after that even if she still made faces as if she were choking the food down.

Once breakfast was underway, Jaune switched on a ceiling mounted hologram projector and started going over duties. “Ruby, you already know what you're doing. Nothing invasive on the ECM ship just yet; just take stock of what we can strip and sell and what we want to keep with the ship to sell as-is.”

“I again object to putting Atlasian technology into the hands of you... you people!” Weiss groused.

“Objection noted and cheerfully ignored,” Jaune waved her off. “Even getting top dollar is only going to be a fraction of what we could have made scavenging off that derelict. The way you see it, you owe us way more than the ship you don't even actually own.”

Ruby threw an arm around the other woman, who quailed and tried to escape her surprisingly strong grasp. “Come on, Weiss. I'll split my share of the sale with you if you help. You're gonna need the money once we hit Vale station. Everything's more expensive on stations instead of on planets.”

“Then why aren't you dropping us off on a planet then?” Weiss huffed, doing her best not to focus on the sudden realization that she was broke save for the clothes on her back.

“Because you do not want to get dropped off on-world anywhere in the Remnants. The planets are all resource worlds, worthless rocks, or have wildlife so big and bad it kept the Empire from expanding out here in the first place. And sometimes that wildlife is two-legged.” Her violet eyes widened with cruel glee. “Hey Jaune! Let's drop them off at Fallwind! I bet Cinder'd pay top dollar for them.”

Jaune held up a hand. “We are not going back to Fallwind or any port of call on that entire planet as long as I'm captain. One time almost dying of black henaid poisoning is enough thank you. Plus, as far as I know, Nora and my bounties are still active there.”

Yang smirked. “Aw come on, I was just joking. We could cram them in Shuttle 2 and send them that direction.”

“They're here for the next week and change, Yang. End of discussion.” Jaune didn't give her a chance to react, pivoting swiftly. “But maybe you can blow off some steam separating the shuttle and the Xiphos down in the cargo bay. Nora, go with and see if they can be repaired?”

“Aye, aye captain!” Nora saluted.

Jaune nodded. “Perfect. Blake, I'd like you to shadow Ren today, learn the bridge controls so you can relieve him if necessary. Ren, as soon as we're in range of the ansible, send a message to Ozpin. Let him know about our guests, the new crew roster and that he's got first bid on everything we're bringing back.”

The pilot nodded silently, content that his routine wasn't going to be altered.

“And finally, during the fight yesterday the Xiphos lost some weapons coming in through the cargo bay doors. They're stuck to our belly thanks to our gravity well. Not only are they valuable if restored to the Xiphos, but they'll compromise our heat shields if we ever have to go planetside. So someone's going to have to go extra-vehicular traversal to go get it. And seeing as the rest of the crew is occupied, looks like that's me.”

He looked to Pyrrha. “Have you had EVT training?”

“Everyone on the Paladin had drilled bi-monthly,” she confirmed. “If you're asking me to accompany you, I'm more than capable of assisting you.”

“Great.”

“Hold it!” Yang bellowed. “I don't trust Miss Kitty here on the bridge, especially with just Ren there to keep an eye on her. Next thing you know, he's incapacitated and we're blooming into near orbit of Zactorio II itself with the shields down and weapons offline.”

Ren raised an eyebrow at her. “You know, I might not be as overtly tough as you, but I'm more than capable of my own self defense.”

Rolling her eyes, Blake lolled her head back, staring at the ceiling. “And for the last time, I'm the last person here to turn on anyone. Including you. You've been plotting a one-woman mutiny over my becoming part of the crew since the moment I met you.”

Suddenly Yang found herself on the other end of a glares from Jaune, Ruby, Ren and Nora. She put on a cheesy smile. “Hey, I have plans to include all of you. Ruby, you were going to help me because we're sister. Nora, I was going to promise to buy you explosives after we sell all the old lady crap from Jaune's room. Ren, of course you'd fold instantly if Nora was in my corner. And Jaune, well I'd... I'd lock you in one of the nice storage sheds on board.”

In answer, Jaune could only face palm. “Yang. This has to stop.”

“Not until my ship is Zact-free.” Yang folded her arms defiantly.

“You're really just lucky I need your sister to keep the ship together as much as I need Nora to keep it running.” Jaune said, only half joking as he stood. “Also you're on dish duty.”

He walked to one of the ladders up to the docking level, leaving the others as they were. Ruby ignored all the tension left in his wake, grinning widely as she leaned over to poke Yang in the shoulder. “Did you hear that? I'm indispensable.”

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The docking level was where the Beacon's three main airlocks were located: one normally reserved for each shuttle, plus the maintenance lock specifically for EVT work. Pyrrha found Jaune there after getting directions from Ruby. He was already wearing a space suit and kneeling beside a magnetically levitating skiff with supplies and tools strapped to its deck, checking it over.

“Hello again,” she made her presence known. Jaune merely nodded in her direction. She stood there a few moments in the following silence before adding, “You missed another spectacular explosion from your... security officer?” She really wasn't sure—and to be honest, neither were the crew of the Beacon. “Yang was not very happy at all that you left me unsupervised. Thankfully Your... gunner? Mechanic? Ruby intervened on my behalf and sent me up here to find you.”

Jaune just continued his work, closing up several panels on the skiff.

“Is now not a good time to ask why people here dislike the Zact so much?”

He closed the final panel and and straightened up. “Really not a good time,” He said, then sighed. “It's nothing against you. I'm just... I honestly thought Yang and I were closer friends than this. It's only been a few years, but we've been through a lot. At least enough where you'd think she'd not pull a gun on me, or plot to turn everyone else on this boat against me.”

Rubbing a gloved hand across his temple, he paced the small room. “I know she's worried about Ruby, but...” He ended his pacing at a wall, leaning hard against it. “Founders and Makers, I don't know what to do with this.”

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Jaune's very-much-not-aunt gave him a stern look as he sat on the counter next to the stove top doing his best to act as petulant as possible. His bottom lip was poking out, his arms were crossed, and he was leveling his best glare at her.

“Yes, cooking is less thrilling than piloting or combat, but it is more important than both combined.” She went back to forming cakes from protein paste and whey. “Besides, feeding the crew is a microcosm of the captain's job. Cooking for them teaches you their diet, what supplements they needs, etcetera. So too much the captain look after all the crew's needs and keep the peace. If there is something wrong with your crew, it falls on your shoulders to deal with it.” 

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Pyrrha watched Jaune's back, forcing herself to stay still. She still had mixed emotions from the strange moment they shared as the Paladin was engulfed in coronal flame. He was the one responsible for the death of her mentor, but he was also one of the most open and big-hearted people she'd ever encountered in the Void.

Perhaps it was that that made her want to go to him in that moment where he was adrift in doubt and pain and that made her want to go confront the blonde woman.

In the end, she didn't do either. It wasn't her place. Not that she knew where her place anymore, but this wasn't it. Still, she didn't feel right leaving him as he was. To that end, she said, “Are we still going outside? I need a suit?”

“Y-yeah,” Jaune nodded, still clearly bothered by what was going on aboard his ship. He pointed to a tall cabinet near the door. “Our EVT suits are pretty much one size fits all barring outlier species. You can wear it over most clothes as long as they aren't too bulky. Standard outfitting: three hours of atmosphere in the rack that fits across your shoulders, magnetic boots, harness with retractable tether cables—twenty feet each—ship-to-suit comms, basic scanning array in the helmet. Probably not as up-to-date as you're used to, but it'll keep you alive in the Void.”

Pyrrha nodded and went to put on her suit.

While she did so, he turned on the skiff's magnetic levitation system and pushed it into the maintenance airlock. Not long after he'd done that, Pyrrha returned in an EVT suit. He had no more idea how she'd fit all of her hair into it than how she'd done so with her armor.

They checked each other's suits for holes or tears that the internal sensors didn't catch before stepping into the lock.

Still keeping his words short and to the point, Jaune Jaune sealed the lock and cycled off the atmosphere and artificial gravity. Their boots magnetized to the plating that served as the airlock floor, keeping them in place as the outer doors opened, presenting a slight ramp out onto the Beacon's hull.

“Test, test,” Pyrrha said into the comm, instinctively following her old EVT training.

“Toast, toast, toast.” Jaune replied, following his own with one of the Beacon's old esoteric crew members. It didn't pass Pyrrha's notice that what was supposed to be a humorous callback was spoken with zero passion. With her concerned frown concealed by the glaze of her helmet, she followed Jaune out onto the hull.

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“Nope, that's local gravic sensors. Uh-uh—interior door monitors and security. That's!”

Letting out a savage cry of frustration, Weiss threw up her hands, incidentally knocking Ruby off her perch hanging off the back of the command seat in the ECM ship. “This is impossible! What is wrong with your ship?! This isn't on-board command software, it's just five trillion lines of uncommented spaghetti code. How does your ship even run on this?” By now her arms were flailing. “There's no file system, barely an operating system. Some of this is literally just naked machine code in a ny-ja container script. And you expect me to marry sleek, efficient Atlasian coding to... to this?”

Ruby rolled up onto her knees, now leaning over the high arm of the throne-like command seat. “It's really just putting in mutual dynamic calls in the codes, right? It's not like you have to rewrite information from our ship to yours.”

Weiss sighed dramatically and looked past her console to the rest of her ships bridge.

Her ship. Her first mission with her ship and look what happened. The pristine, white chamber was all soft curves with pods for a half dozen bridge crew built along the internal walls for those occasions where it might be fully crewed to fly missions independent of a capitol ship.

Well now she certainly was independent of the Paladin now, but basically bound for scullery maid duty on some backwater space station—or whatever menial jobs were meant to be had. She was a genius coder and electronic warfare technician—and all that was going to waste.

She glared aside at her pint-sized captor. It was insane that someone living so far from Zact space could be so... happy.

“I suppose you're right, but finding where to put them into what you so generously call 'code' is going to take forever.” She idly scrolled up and down the page, barely bringing herself to attempt to use the search function. “Realistically, once you reach the station, you should install a real ship's operating system. Or better yet, an AI first mate—that is if you even have one of these. I'd half be convinced this ship would be better off if we just deleted the whole thing and started over.”

The next sound that came out of her mouth was a 'hurk!' as someone grabbed the high ponytail she'd put her hair up in and almost lifted her cleanly out of her seat. “I knew it!”

Ruby was on her feet immediately. “Yang! She was being sarcastic!”

“No, she was trying to convince you to erase the ship's OS! Bad enough that she was talking kleph about it.”

At this, Ruby raised an eyebrow. “Don't give me that, we all know the ships code is a mess. I was starting to hope she'd either help recode it, or teach me enough so I can do it myself. There's only so much I can learn only getting to a data trunk every month or so.”

“Can you please put me down while you—ah!” she was dropped none too gently back into her seat. Craning her neck, she glared up at Yang. Isn't your assignment to harass the traitor down in the cargo bay?”

“I have someone covering it.”

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After hearing Yang explore that their newest crew member was dangerous and libel to turn on them at any minute, Nora had naturally handed Blake an industrial diamond saw and pointed her toward the wreckage.

As the treacherous and volatile person she, was, Blake donned some goggles and heavy gloves and started cutting the shuttle away from where it had more or less wrapped around the prow of the more sturdy military fighter.

It didn't take long for her to get the distinct feeling that she was being watched.

Which she was. Nora was lying on her stomach atop the Xiphos's canopy, staring at her.

The diamond saw cut off with a low whir.

“What?”

Nora looked sheepish.

Blake gave her a blank look. “What?”

Nora's eyes slowly rose to look directly at Blake's ears.

The Beacon's newest crew member let out a put-upon sigh. “Go ahead and get it over with. But pet with the fur, not against.”

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“But that's not any of your business,” Yang huffed, stepping around the command seat. “Now that's Jaune's not on board...”

“He's EVT, not actually away.” Ruby pointed out.

“Still of the ship.” Yang said haughtily, “I, as second in command, say I don't want you mucking about in the code. So let's go powder puff. She leaned over, reaching as if to grab Weiss under her arms only to be slapped away.

Weiss folded her arms, refusing to be moved. “I don't claim to understand what the politics are like on this ship, but clearly you are the last person right now that the captain would put in charge. Even I can tell you've gone above an beyond in terms of insubordination, but I'm pretty sure you made it personal.”

That earned her the most baleful glare from Yang. “You don't know what you're talking about. Jaune knows what he signed up for and what I signed up for and it was a distinctly Zact-free environment. He's the one that made it personal when he didn't space the three of you, alright? Things would have been just fine with our little crew if it wasn't for you!”

She banged her fist on what she was expecting to be the edge of the console. What she actually did was punch the keyboard, unleashing a swarm of random characters into the code Weiss was working on and pressing enter for good measure.

The console warbled as the change was sent to the ship...

Then the power blinked on and off.

“Yang!” Ruby was up like a shot, shoving her much larger sister aside to stare dumbfounded at the console—which had restarted when the power blinked. “No. No. No. No. No!”

“What? What happened?” Yang asked, feeling mounting dread.

“I don't even know yet!” Ruby said in a panic.

Weiss rose from her chair and likewise pushed Yang aside to look at the screen. “I'll tell you what you did, you emotional oaf: you just rewrote part of the code for the entire ship blind and executed it. There's no telling what effect this might have. You might have turned off the CO scrubbers, unsealed all the airlocks...”

There was a warble before Ren's voice came through the comms. “Guys? Something weird is happening. Nora said she just lost gravics down in the cargo bay and when I went to go check? I'm locked in the bridge. In fact, I'm seeing everything locked down and inaccessible across the ship.”

Well that isn't so bad,” Yang said. “We can blow the doors or hack them.”

“...including the airlocks,” Ren finished gravely.

Ruby gasped. “Oh no, Jaune and Pyrrha!”

“Maybe they aren't outside?” Weiss offered, unsure why she was trying to reassure the two sisters.

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“Okay, we're coming up on the equator of the ship. We're going to have to go real slow to maneuver the skiff across it. The seal that opens up for the bloom drive is completely rubber and ceramic, so the mag-lev wo--”

Jaune could tell the comm had died because Pyrrha stopped and turned toward him, gesturing to her ear.

He fiddled with the controls on his arm a bit before realizing that the relay to the ship was down. Then he noticed that the location indicator for the maintenance airlock had gone red—meaning its was locked down instead of accessible from the outside like it was supposed to be in emergencies.

Hurriedly, he reached into a compartment on the skiff and opened it, revealing a thick cable with universal connectors on either end. Passing one to Pyrrha, he made sure she saw where he plugged it into the belt at his waist so she could do the same.

“Can you hear me?” He asked as soon as she was plugged in.

“Yes. What happened to comms?”

He shrugged, “They just blinked out. The airlock when into lockdown too.”

“A glitch? Or...” She didn't want to say 'mutiny', but she was thinking 'mutiny'.

“A glitch.” Jaune said all too quickly. “According to legend, the Beacon's operating system was originally hand written in a barn during the War to hide the fact from the Empire that the rebels were building ships to fight against them. It's workable, but a mess. Ruby knows it better than me luckily. She'll get the locks open soon.”

Pyrrha looked around at the barren landscape of the ship's hull. “How long can we stay out here?”

Jaune paused briefly as he drew information from both suits thanks to the hard line. “About... two hours. Three if we keep our heart rates down, but I imagine being locked outside in the Void is going to put that a bit out of reach.”

Unconsciously, she hugged herself. “There was never a chance of this in out EVT drills: you're always within reach of another airlock, or repair drones, or... something. Even with my Xiphos, you can tap into the atmo-generator from the outside. What do we do?”

After looking around for a few moments, Jaune pointed to the juncture where the point defense guns were mounted to the ship, just above its equator. “Let's have a seat and wait. Maybe have a nice chat.”

TO BE CONTINUED...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here it is, the next highly anticipated chapter of Shattered Stars. Not as much action, but then it is a two-parter. We'll see what comes next, yes?
> 
> One of the reasons for this is that I want to really dig into who these characters are in this universe before throwing them into high adventure. That and establish a few curve ball relationships. I did a little Nora/Blake friendship in Arc Reaction, but I really want to go into that here because I think they would make a fun pair. Same for Ruby and Pyrrha, which again I've touched on and really wanted to see in the show. Having Ruby be an advocate for the Atlasians is going to be a big thing in the series.
> 
> So I think we can all guess who Jaune's aunt was by now. This is a relationship I've seen a few times in fics and really like the idea of. She seems like the kind of person who has a lot to offer a kid, but a great reluctance to do so.
> 
> Yang isn't looking good here, but don't worry, I'm not trying to make her unlikable. We;ll learn why she's so hostile next chapter and she has reason to fear and hate the Zact.
> 
> Weiss is always fun to write. That's all I can say anymore. I may actually have to do a pure Weiss fic.
> 
> Also, this opening is the entire reason I gave Jaune the technopathy ability. Jsut so he could talk sexy to computers and make Pyrrha blush. Because I can.
> 
> I've seen Episode 2 of Vol 5 now SPOILERS
> 
> And holy shit a good villain! Salem's group actually has a good villain in their fold now! Two even! Watts is awesome and deserves to be in charge of evil. Hazel has actual dimensions and clearly hated what went down there. Sure Adam is cardboard cut out garbage, and Tyrian is a garbage fire, but Watts and Hazel pick up the slack! Vol 5 is doing really well so far save for Weiss's... um... stance. It looked really, really lewd is what I'm saying.
> 
> Just give us 1000% more Watts and no more shock deaths though and we're cool.
> 
> Anyway, just so you know: due to popular demand, Shattered Stars is already the winner of the first slot from All the Myriad Ways and will be the story taking Arc Reaction's place once it finishes. This even before I even introduced Assassination Vacation, my last big Arkos idea. I'll explain what that's going to be later.
> 
> Next Episode of Shattered Stars: While Ruby and Weiss work together to fix the Beacon's OS, Yang thinks back to when she joined the crew while Jaune finally explains to Pyrrha what the Zact did to earn the hatred as they wait for rescue... or suffocation.


	3. First Impressions Part 2

“Hurry up, eggheads! Get the airlocks open!” Yang was pacing about the bridge of the ECM ship, tugging at her blonde mane in frustration. “Do you know how little air EVT suits have?!”

“Several hours.” Weiss's eyes were focused on the screen as she searched through the mangled code. “Even a primitive space-faring society understands the dangers of potentially being delayed while EVT.” A growl escaped her lips. “And speaking of primitive: why are there no backups? Why is there no versioning? Why were we working directly with the live code while the ship was using it?!”

Ruby poked her fingers together shyly. “Um... because the only teacher I ever had for coding was also someone who can just talk to the computer by touching it?”

A groan escaped Weiss and she buried her face in her hands. “Founders and Makers, what did I ever do to deserve this?”

“Oh I could go on for days,” Yang spat, “but who cares? Quit whining and get back to work. Jaune could be suffocating out there!”

This made the white-haired former officer look up at her. “You threatened his life just yesterday! You threatened mutiny this morning! Why are you even concerned? From what I can tell, you hate the man.”

Yang started to snap back at her, but couldn't find the words. Instead, she folded her arms and glared at the ground. “Look, I'm mad at the guy for bringing you lot on board, but I don't want him to die. I... owe him a lot.” She sighed heavily and corrected, “Have owed him a log time. Since the moment we met.”

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Three years ago...

“This is the ventral access run. The only thing important to you down here is the ventral docking clamps and receiving area. If we need to haul a ship in with the Attractor Beam, this is where it'll bring them. The clamps override their airlock while we've got plenty of cover to stage a boarding action.”

The man leading the little group was big and broad-shouldered with russet hair cut into a military style. A heavy plasma pistol rode at his hip as he strode through the corridor with confidence.

He was followed by the crew of the Beacon: Jaune, Nora, Ren, and two men their age. One was a blonde who wore just an open vest and jeans. He was of castoff stock; a tawny-furred prehensile tail the Empire's genetic parting gift. The other had died his hair blue and carried himself with casual confidence to shame the man giving the tour.

That man was Captain Cardin Winchester of the Almace. “The belly gun stations are down here too, but none of you are allowed t use them. Then there's the brig. I hope none of your crew is stupid enough to end up in there.” Just as he gestured to the secure doors, something thumped and screamed behind them. His expression grew sour.

Jaune frowned. “You've got someone in there?”

Cardin snorted. “No one important. Just a couple of bounties we're going to turn in once this job is done.” The large man puffed with pride and keyed in a code on the door. It clacked open, revealing a compact chamber with four barred cubicles inside; two on each side.

With a gesture, Cardin invited them in, though the room was only really big enough for him and Jaune to enter.

The two captains came face to face with the occupants of two of the cubicles.

One was a young woman of about seventeen. Her black hair had grown long and shaggy and she was curled up on the floor of the cell, appearing to be asleep.

The other was not nearly as peaceful. She was broad and wild like her blonde hair, and she slammed the bars of her prison with her palms with a strength that rattled them as she eyed Cardin. “Winchester, you dirty ghelemp worm! When I get out of here, I'm going to feed you your manhood!

Jaune shied away, glancing aside to Cardin. “I-is that what she was wanted for? Feeding some guy his...” He glanced down.

Cardin smirked and flexed at the caged woman. “Nah. They're just flagged in Zact space. Escapees from on of their schools or something. Money's really good for over-aged truants though.”

He didn't notice Jaune's eyes narrow, or his gaze flick to his crew standing outside. Ren's expression turned severe and he nodded before making a silent hand sign to the others. “Really? There's a bounty on them for leaving a Zact school?”

“Yeah. The Zact are weird, but the pay good. Whatever. Let's move on so we can start this job.”

Jaune nodded, still watching the angry blonde in the cell. “Actually, maybe we should head up to the mess. I'm feeling hungry. What about the rest of you? Nora? Ren? Sun? Neptune?” Each nodded in turn.

Cardin blinked. “What? Hungry? What kind of time do you run on your ship when you're hungry now?”

“Then we're all agreed,” said Jaune. Then he quick drew his pistol, thumped to voltage down to the point where it was considered less lethal and shot the larger man in the chest.

Caught off guard, the Almace's captain twitched, then dropped onto the brig's carpeted floor.

Jaune nodded smartly and pulled off his glove, slamming his hand against the security panel on the blonde's cell. “Nice to get acquainted with you, sexy,” he muttered.

The blonde's eyes widened. “Hey! I don't know what you think is going on here, but if you touch me, I'll kill you and if you touch my sister, I'll do worse and let you live with it after. You get me?”

“Not talking to you,” Jaune said, distracted. Then the locks in the cell door disengaged and the door swung open.

“Wait.” the blonde said, confused as to what just happened. “How did...” But Jaune was of, moving over to the other cell. She took one step out only to find Nora hunched over the downed Cardin, pulling the pistol off his belt. She turned, holding it up, grinning.

“Here. We're probably gonna shoot our way out, so you need something to shoot with! I'm Nora, by the way!”

“Yang,” replied Yang, testing the gun's weight in her hand. “Why are you guys doing it?”

The blonde castoff, Sun poked his head in the brig door. “Because we might be vultures, pirates, thieves and all around dashing rogues, but we've got standards.”

“Yeah!” The blue-haired one peered in beside him. “Though... Jaune? How are we going to explain to Cinder how were completely screwed the job she set up between us and the crew of the Almace?” He gave a nervous grin that suggested even if he was an accessory to what went down, he was nervous about the consequences. 

The second cell door opened and Jaune stepped aside as Yang rushed to her sister. “Are you kidding? Cinder loves me. She'll understand.”

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“She did not,” Ruby supplied.

Weiss's fingers froze, hovering over the keyboard. “A bounty for 'escaping' a school? That doesn't make sense.”

Even as she was saying it, she wondered what possessed her to say it out loud. She almost wanted to slap herself as she saw Yang's eyes narrow. They almost seemed to flash red. “Oh you don't do you? Let me guess? The schools in the core worlds aren't like that? Oh, I know! Maybe only colonial schools are basically prisons with more drugged food!”

“...drug-laced... what are you even talking about?” Weiss demanded.

Yang roared out her anger and lunged, only to be intercepted by Ruby who put her whole body into holding her back. “Easy there big sis. Remember we kinda need her to save Jaune, okay? And who knows, maybe she really doesn't know. How much time do ranking officers anywhere actually spend in school?”

“Hey!”

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“No one can blame you for not knowing,” Jaune happened to be saying at that exact moment. He and Pyrrha had brought the skiff to the base of one of the point-defense mounts and had positioned it so they could settle behind it, their backs resting against the weapon mount.

He had decided that now that they had time to kill (or possibly be killed), then was a good time to explain to the fighter pilot why the Zact were so hated.

“The Zact government keeps it from the citizenry. There's a reason they have the rule that citizens can't travel to the colonies without special permits. To the rest of space? Everyone knows by now. And they hate and fear them for it.

“See, at the end of the war, the Zact were afraid of insurrection. They beat the Empire largely from subverting them from within, and with the Ex-Laws and... other... remnants of the Empire running around, it happening in reverse is a pretty big possibility. Every new planet they induct could be a poison pill. So they needed a way to ensure they had control.

“Let me ask you this: what's the first thing the Zact offer when they come to a new world?”

Pyrrha cocked her head in curiosity. “To share our knowledge of course.”

“In the form of the Academic Fleet, right? Those big stations they bloom into orbit?” Pyrrha nodded. “You ever think it was odd that education for colonials always involves sending their kids into space for ten standardized months out of the year?”

She shrugged. “It's the same for us. The breaks are more spaced out, but we spend the same amount of time in our school. What does this have to do with why the Zact are hated?”

Jaune drew in a deep breath. “Because they're potential hostages, Pyrrha. You've never heard of it happening, but I have. My parents... they were part of the diplomatic corps. They were meant to oversee that kind of thing; deliver the news that this chancellor's daughter or this grand laur's myshean won't be coming home unless they change this law or sign that treaty.”

At this, Pyrrha sat up. “What?”

“It's standard operating procedure in the colonies. No one is going to risk angering the people who have their children at gunpoint most of the time, and if they do want to resist, they have to take their kids and disappear. It's all a win-win for the Zact government. Only the people who do what they say remain.”

By now, Pyrrha was shaking her head. “That's impossible. We're talking about billions of people here. Someone would know. Someone would tell the people and they'd put a stop to it. The Zact aren't a tyranny; the citizens vote our leaders into and out of power and they would never allow what you're talking about.”

Jaune suppressed a sigh. “This is why I didn't want to talk about it. People from the core—the citizens—are purposefully kept from this kind of thing. That's the reason for the travel restrictions and why the core is on it's own data trunk separated from the ones the colonies use. All the news you get from the colonies comes from approved sources.”

“But it's been decades now,” Pyrrha argued, “Someone from the diplomatic corps or the expeditionary forces would have objected and—”

“Had their own children taken? Or been disappeared? Pyrrha... the reason I'm here right now is because my parents are just the people you're talking about. My father was an Operator in the expeditionary forces, my mother was... in Intelligence...” He coughed and skipped over that subject because he'd never decided how much he believed of the stories his aunt told him about his mother's work.

“Anyway, they did object, and they did form a conspiracy to bring the who thing to light. Only the Zact counter-intelligence was too good and they were found out.”

Hearing this made Pyrrha temporarily forget about her own concerns. “They were... Jaune, what happened to your parents?”

Pressing his lips together, Jaune could only give a helpless shrug. “I don't even know if they're alive or dead. They did manage a contingency plan that got me and my sisters out of school and scattered to the far corners of the galaxies though.” In a smaller voice he added, “At least I've been able to confirm most of them are okay.”

The helmets made reading one another's expressions impossible, but Jaune could almost see the horror in Pyrrha's stiff, shaky posture. “I understand if this is hard to believe, he added, “But you can ask my aunt once we reach Vale station. She's not as touchy about it as Yang. She wasn't an actual victim after all.”

After a long pause, Pyrrha asked in a small voice, “What... what did they do to the children?”

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In that moment, Ruby was probably the only person in the triad of galaxies that could have held Yang back. As incensed as she was, nothing could bring her to purposefully harm he sister.

That didn't mean she couldn't loom past Ruby's form to shoot hate from her eyes at Weiss. “Look here, you pampered little doll. You probably came out of your mom or the test tube, or whatever kind of way Zacts are born the perfect obedient citizen who didn't even need schooling to learn the anthem or the pledge of loyalty and all that other Zact-loving crap we had to. So I guess they didn't even have to poison you to make you believe in their ny-ja lies, but I've seen it with my own eyes before we escaped the station you people parked over Patch!”

Now Weiss looked even more confused. “Patch? I remember my father mentioning that place—Patch entered the Zact Alliance willingly. They're friends. Even if we would stoop to chemical warfare, we wouldn't use it on frie—”

Somehow Yang got around Ruby and struck Weiss right in the jaw. “Don't you dare tell me it didn't happen!” She shouted in the reeling woman's face. “Ruby—this Ruby right here, the one that's been trying almost as hard as Jaune to protect you scum; she's went through it.”

“Yang,” Ruby whined, clearly agitated, “I thought we weren't going to talk about that anymore. I barely remember it anyway.”

Cautiously, so as not to allow Weiss out of her line of sight, Yang glanced aside at Ruby. “She needs to hear this, Ruby. They like to pretend they're all innocent when they're not.” Once more, she turned back to Weiss, eyes blazing. “They put her into 'Disciplinary Authority'. I didn't see her for two weeks. When I started asking questions, I noticed my food started tasting funny, started feeling tired, things stopped making sense. See, turns out I'm allergic to that stuff they put in the food. It makes me kind of high instead of what it's supposed to do. So I stopped eating for a week and went to find Rubes. When I did...” tears started to form in her eyes at the memory, “she wasn't... wasn't anything like she normally is. She was so dull and lifeless. The food they were giving her didn't smell right and the water... it was so full of stuff it was cloudy. And there were these recordings constantly playing telling her how to act, how... how not to be her, but what they want her to be.”

Weiss's eyes widened. She'd know people who went on Disciplinary Authority. Every one had come back not only swearing off their previous poor behavior, by borderline proselytizing against it. Could those methods Yang was talking about had been deployed not only in the colonies, but in the core worlds? In the officer's schools no less?

She didn't want that to be true, and she certainly wanted to stop discussing it.

“I'm not going to argue with you about this,” she said primly. “Your captain and my mutinous former compatriot are trapped outside with limited life support. Have you seen someone suffocate to death? It isn't something I would wish on anyone.”

Something in her regal bearing started to crack as she said that and her eyes started to dart about the bridge. “I... I've lost people like that. Family. Friends of the family. It's a terrible way to go.” Soldiering through, she lifted her chin defiantly. “If there is anything in my power I can do to prevent those two from suffering it, I will do it. Even if it means we blow a hole in one of the airlocks and have to seal it with panels off this ship.”

“Would that work?” Yang asked immediately.

“No!” Ruby said, “That's not how airlocks work! Why does everyone keep asking for things to work the way they can't?” She slipped past Weiss to look at the console. “Hey! What if we used the ECM to 'attack' the ship with this ship's OS?”

Leaning in beside her, Weiss shook her head. “We could if the ECM dish wasn't destroyed. Maybe we can try to upload upstream through our hard line here, but that would take... well more time than we have. If you can figure out where to put it, I might be able to write some rudimentary door code we can then upload.”

“Do it.” said Yang. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Just stay out of the way,” Weiss snapped, then visibly forced herself to soften, “I understand you're worried about your captain, but your skills don't exactly translate into coding and patching.”

“Oh,” replied Yang, her eyes downcast.

Ruby instantly caught her sister's change in mood and offered her a smile. “Well, we're also kind of trapped in here until we get the doors open, so how about you make sure life support is stable and see if there's some food in here?”

“Right. On it, Rubes,” Yang said with forced cheerfulness. With that, she set off to explore the rest of the small ship. While she did so, she thought back again to the day she and her sister first boarded the Beacon.

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Three Years Ago...

“Well we better get out of here before Cardin comes to,” Jaune said directing his crew through the airlock joining the Beacon and Almace.

Ren paused while passing him by. “I'm not saying I disagree with your actions, but I feel I need to remind you that we only took this job in the first pace because the xenon and water supplies are running low—alongside our funds. What are we going to do now?”

Jaune returned his gaze steadily. “We're not-not taking this job. We still go through with the raid. It just means you and Nora might have to be in on the action too.”

The dark-haired pilot sighed softly. “You know we'll do it if we have to, but it's always a bad idea to have everyone off the ship.”

The captain nodded, then looked past Ren. “You have a point. Maybe...” He stepped over to where the two sisters they rescued were cautiously making their way toward the airlock. “Hey,” he said, extending a hand to them. Yang gave him a wary look, only to be nearly knocked over by the speed with which her sister leapt to shake his hand.

“Hey there. Sorry I didn't say it before, but thanks so much for saving us. I was kinda out of it because I haven't been sleeping and the big guy didn't feed us much, but I'm feeling better now—thanks for the ration bars, by the way.”

She was shaking his hand with such vigor that Jaune was struck silent for a moment. “I'm-- I mean you're welcome. Look; we're more than happy to drop you two off somewhere relatively safe, but first we've got a job to do. And I was wondering if you might want to make a little cash before you leave the—gah!”

Ruby was replaced by Yang who grabbed him by the throat and forcibly separated him and her sister. “I don't know what you're playing at here, but we're not 'for sale'. We're mercs like you seem to be, not doxies.”

“That's what I was hoping to hire you for,” Jaune croaked.

Yang raised an eyebrow, but let him go. “Oh. Um...” she searched for a way to save face, “Well how did you know we were fighters?”

Massaging his neck, Jaune shot her a reproachful look. “Gee, I don't know why I thought you might be prone to violence.”

The tiniest glimmer of self-awareness filtered through Yang's eyes before she set her jaw and lifted her chin. “Look, I just do whatever it takes to make sure my sister's okay. If you don't like that...”

“Actually I do like that. I do whatever it takes to make sure my crew's okay too, so we'll get along just fine.” Jaune offered his hand again. “What do you say? You two wanna join up with the crew of the Beacon?”

Yang took a moment to study his eyes, then his hand. Then Ruby surged passed her, grabbing said hand with both of hers. “Deal!” She said exuberantly. “Yang's big and strong and is good with heavy guns and I'm a sniper—though the big guy took my rifle. Think we can get me a new one?”

It was impossible for Jaune or Yang not to smile at Ruby's antics. And so the Beacon added two new members to her crew.

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“So you mentioned you had seven siblings? What was that like?”

Over the past couple of hours, Jaune had kept Pyrrha occupied by telling her stories about his time as Captain of the Beacon, from the jobs they'd done to other close calls they'd had. He and his crew had always managed to pull one another through in the end.

Now he wasn't so sure. They were on their last hour of atmosphere in the suits and they'd had no communication from the ship. If something had gone so profoundly wrong that even basic systems were down, that could mean the crew inside were in just as much danger as he and Pyrrha were.

That sobering thought had made him go quite and Founders and Makers smile on her, Pyrrha was trying to fill that silence. He couldn't bring himself to ignore her.

“Maddening. What I can remember at least. Even though we had a big house, it was packed. And since the others were all girls, I was the odd boy out. I even had to bunk with two of them at school.”

“Have you been able to talk with them since...” she couldn't finish the sentence, but she didn't have to.

“Some of them. Mostly through my aunt, though I've managed to meet meet Blanche and Gris on the odd station run. They're both here in Freespace. The others? They're hidden all over, even in the Zact inner sphere and on a couple of Ex-Law worlds.”

Pyrrha gazed up at the passing stars to avoid looking at him. That would be useless thanks to their helmets anyway. “Why are you still separated? It's been years, hasn't it?”

A small sigh escaped Jaune. “Because the Zact don't call off their bounties. That's how they make sure people don't come back to tell the truth after they escape. If someone were to see eight siblings the right ages together, they might get it in their head they can make a lot of money. Ruby and Yang have been targeted more than once since they go here. Until something drastic changes... well the Arcs are going to have to stay apart.”

In a smaller voice, he added, “And it doesn't look like anything's going to change in my lifetime.”

Now Pyrrha did look at him, imagining the haunted expression she'd seen the day before when he failed to stop the Paladin from destroying itself, the same one from just a few hours ago when he admitted he didn't know what to do about Yang.

“Jaune... I obviously have no real power over it, but... but I have to believe that one day you will see your family again. Your whole family. And the family you've got on this ship? I'm sure they're doing everything in their power to save you right now.”

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“Guys, I should warn you that Nora is this close to getting Blake to cut me out of the bridge with a diamond saw,” Ren's voice came over the comm in the ECM ship's bridge. Then in a more somber tone, he added, “How are things going up there?”

Weiss snarled in response. “Hopeless! I've gone through every scenario. I have the code; the barest snippet possible to give us door control, but I have no way to introduce it into the Beacon. If I introduce it into the wrong place in the existing code, I could make things worse and I can't very well overwrite the whole OS or we'll lose life support among other things. We might as well let your engineer take the saw tot he hull—it might be the only way to reach them in time now.”

“We are not giving up though!” Ruby added, somehow sill managing to be cheerful. She was at the ship's engineering console, trying to find a backup ECM dish or something similar. “Don't worry, Ren. We'll get Jaune back. Pyrrha too!”

Yang combed her fingers through her hair in frustration. “Okay, so we know the Beacon's screwed until we get Jaune back on board to give it his magic touch, but can't we do anything from here? Like is there a cargo hold door you can open? Torpedo tubes?”

“Electronic Countermeasures Ship.” Weiss enunciated spitefully. “We have the ECM dish, an attractor Beam, magnetic grapplers, and point defenses. That's it. There's a reason I had a fighter escort.”

Whatever retort Yang was going to shoot back with was cut off by a gasp from Ruby. “That's it!”

“Come again?” asked Weiss as the younger woman enlarged an image of the ship's blueprints.

The wire-frame rendering rotated to show a top-down image of the ship, then highlighted the 'horns' surrounding the ship's spine-mounted attractor beam. “You have a capture lock for when you reel someone in on your attractor beam.”

Yang shot a glare at Weiss, who raised her hand defensively. “Don't you think I would have mentioned that if it twas in any way feasible? I know that I'm the next one taking a walk outside if Arc dies. But the capture lock isn't a real airlock you can go in and out of. It's meant to block a small ship's access to its airlock so the crew can't escape. Maybe if you were three inches thick and four feet tall it'd be solution, but you aren't.”

Ruby shook her head and had the audacity to giggle. “Weiss, you know what your problem is? You're looking at it the wrong way. Hey Ren?”

“Right here, Ruby.”

“Do me a favor, okay? Disengage the docking clamps on the ECM ship. We've got crew members to save!”

Yang started to nod, then raised an eyebrow. “Wait. Members? Plural?”

“As acting captain, I'm making a command decision.”

“You can't do that, Jaune's still captain!”

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Jaune knew that Pyrrha was seeing the same indicator too—and had been for a good while now. They were well inside the twenty minute mark for the last of their atmosphere.

He'd seen what happened when a suit lost atmo. It wasn't like simply running out of oxygen; the tank started cycling propellant into the suit, which condensed water vapor until the wearer was drowning in what appointed to a skin-tight plastic bag.

“Do you ever just look at the stars?” Pyrrha's words, soft and low, interrupted him grim mood. “We live out here; it's the only view we ever get, but have you ever just looked at them? They're a lot different than they look from the Paladin. And you can see so many more than on Atlas Prime. We always talk about the Black and the Void, but never about the stars and worlds unless we're actually visiting them. But we should. They're beautiful.”

She sighed, a mix between content and mournful. “If I'm to die, then there are worse last sights. And—no offense—but at least I'm not alone.” Then, a bitter laugh, “I get to die the opposite of how I lived.”

Jaune reached out and took her hand. The gloves of the suits were made for fine work, so they managed to fit together well enough. “Hey. Hey. We are not going to die. Haven't you listened to my stories? Thrilling escapes, last minute rescues? It's what we do.” He squeezed her hand. “And once we're rescued, I promise you that you'll never be a lone again.”

After a long silence, she squeezed back. “I'm not so certain that rescue is coming. But if it is, I'll hold you to those words.”

“Hey, it's a promise. And an Arc...” A strong vibration through the hull plates cut him off. Casting about, his eyes landed on the ECM docked far above them below the spinal guns. The running lights had just come on and in their glare, he could see the docking clamps retracting into the Beacon's hull.

“What does that mean?” asked Pyrrha, watching as the ECM pulled away from the dock.

Jaune swallowed a gulp of all-to humid air. “Either the thrilling rescue is underway... or whatever locked us out was worse than I thought and they're abandoning ship.” The craft maneuvered clear of the Beacon on retrorockets, then used the same to rotate in space. Then it fired all rockets to dock from another angle.

“And I'm... not sure what that means.” He admitted, trying to figure out what was going on.

Pyrrha on the other hand sat up, energized. “It means we're saved.”

As the pair watched, the ECM craft re-docked with the Beacon using its capture lock. The process left the main airlock exposed. Once the ship was settled into place, the free airlock opened, revealing a figure in a white and blue Zact EV suit complete with a harness holding a retrorocket array for extra-vehicular maneuvering.

They took a flying leap from the airlock, using the harness to guide themselves down to the hull. After a cursory scan of the hull, they spotted the pair and started the long trudge toward them.

“One word about me wearing a Zact suit,” Yang muttered once she was within reach of them, knowing full well they couldn't hear her, “And I will drop both of you down the engine intakes.”

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“There. Back in semi-working order,” Jaune said, removing his hands from the ECM ships console. “Buuuut after this, I think I will seriously look into installing a real operating system. I was never quite sure why the ship was like this in the first place, but hey—technopathy. Its the perfect solution, ya know when you're inside the ship.”

“Yeah, well until we get that new OS, you are not going EV,” said Yang, clapping him on the shoulder.

Jaune keyed in the the commands to open the ECM's airlock—once again docked to the Beacon—and sat back. “I am certainly not against that suggestion. That scrap on our belly can stay there until we rendezvous with Vale station for all I care. Is everyone else okay?”

He was answered by the sound of footfalls thundering in. “Jaune-y!” Nora sang moment before streaking across the bridge to nearly tackle him out of the seat with a hug. “You're not dead!”

Grateful to even see her again, Jaune returned the hug in spades. “What do I always say, Nora? I'm hard to kill.”

Looking past the wall of orange hair in his view courtesy of his engineer, Jaune smiled at everyone assembled. With Blake sidling in with a diamond saw slung over her shoulder, that meant everyone aboard the Beacon but Ren was present. That made sense because Ren would be having the difficult task of making sure the restored systems were running properly.

He nodded to Weiss. “I understand you were instrumental in getting us out of that jam.”

Weiss raised her chin, clearing her throat. “While I did make every effort... I have to admit that the credit goes to Ruby for the actual idea of 'capturing' the Beacon to free up the actual airlock.”

“It was a team effort!” Ruby asserted, grabbing her and Yang into a group hug.

“I managed to keep Nora from breaching the hull to save you.” Blake said blandly, brandishing the saw.

“That plan would have worked!” Nora said, finally dislodging herself from Jaune. “See, we could have sawed open a hole in the cargo hold, then plugged it with what's left of Shuttle One.”

“I'm just glad we didn't have to test it,” said Jaune.

The comms warbled and Ren's voice came in over them. “Welcome back, Captain. This was obviously lower priority than getting you back alive, but while you were gone, we got a reply back from Vale Station. I figured you'd want all of us to hear it?”

Jaune beamed at hearing this. “Hopefully good news. Throw it down to the common room and meet us down there.”

“Consider it done.”

With a resolute nod, Jaune stood. “Okay folks, lets move this welcome party somewhere more familiar.”

They started to file out, Nora first, skipping through the lock as if nothing had happened at all. Bringing up the rear were Yang and Weiss.

“Any reason you didn't tell him exactly how the system got glitched?” asked the former.

Weiss waited until they were completely alone in the airlock before explaining themselves. “I could say that I was doing this to extend the olive branch of friendship. I could say it was the demonstrate my moral superiority. I could even say that it was to maintain—or create—a civil atmosphere on the ship. But in truth it's because I still have ten days on this ship with you and I clearly need leverage over you.”

“So you're blackmailing me?”

“Very much so, yes.”

Meanwhile in the ready room where all the airlocks converged, another short, quiet conversation was taking place. Pyrrha caught Jaune by the shoulder before she could climb down the access ladder. “Hmm?” he asked, turning to see what she wanted. She'd been silent ever since their rescue and he'd been planning to talk to her after making sure the ship and crew were in good order.

“I wanted you to know... well about what we said out there...” She met his gaze levelly. “I honestly thought we were dying. I'm not really going to hold you to it.”

Jaune gave her a side-eye. “Don't worry, you don't have to,” he said, putting a foot on the top rung of the ladder. “I will.” And her terminated that conversation by scuttling down it before she could reply. By the time she caught p with him, he was at the big table, having firmly insulated himself from protests by sitting between Nora and Ruby.

Shooting him a look that told him this wasn't over, Pyrrha took the seat offered to her by Ruby on her other side.

Not long after, the entire crew plus their two guests were gathered around and Jaune called up the reply from the leader of Vale as a hologram that hovered over the table.

Everyone was treated to the image of a man of indeterminate age—ageless might by the best description—with white hair and spectacles seated behind a finely made wooden desk that wouldn't have been out of place among the items in Jaune's quarters. He appeared to have been caught in the middle of sipping from a large, ornate ivory mug when the recording started.

“It's good to hear you've returned to our part of the universe, Mr Arc,” he said after setting the mug down, “However, the news you bear is troubling. No doubt you realize the disastrous threat the technology you've reported presents not just to we in Freespace, but the very concept of galactic society as a whole. The loss of Bloom technology as a trustworthy means of travel would cripple trade, communication and the very foundation upon which we live.”

“Oh no,” Yang groused sarcastically.

Oblivious of the heckling, Ozpin's recording continued, “I have already dispatched teams to investigate the wreckage—without telling them what they're looking at of course. The secret of this ship is one that must be closely guarded. That put you once more within my circle of trust.”

“Here it comes,” muttered Yang, folding her arms.

“Which brings me to my point in this: I would like to offer you and your crew a job.”

Yang threw up her hands, “And there it is. Another seemingly simple plan that turns into a death-maze of explosions and crazy.”

“Yay! I love Ozzy jobs!” Nora grinned ferally.

“We will discuss the actual terms in the security of my office, but up front payment will include a full refit of your ship and a topping of your water and xenon stores. As well as a three months of advance pay for any new crew you hire on for this task.”

Everyone glanced aside to everyone else. For one, that was a lot to offer for any job, especially for 'up front' pay. For another, even without knowing the man by reputation, it was clear to see how smug his expression was when he mentioned new crew. He then went on to confirm their suspicions.

“Speaking of which, I regret to inform you that Vale station is at capacity. We cannot, at the moment, accept new residents. And given the recent political climate, I would be remiss to welcome Zact military personnel as citizens in any event. Your guests can attempt to find work on another ship, but they cannot take up residence here. Perhaps you can find a place for them on the moons of Vacuo, or Menagerie Station.”

Jaune narrowed his eyes at the knowing look Ozpin was somehow sending him from millions of miles away through a recording. The older man knew Jaune wouldn't dump his worst enemy on the harsh resource worlds that made up most of Vacuo, that refugees wouldn't find anything like a nice life on the one habitable moon there, and that non-castoffs might as well just kill themselves for expediency on Menagerie.

There weren't a lot of trustworthy places within a few day's travel—at least not without weeks-long approach distances like Vale.

After just one meeting with the man, he remembered that Yang had succinctly summed interactions with Ozpin up: he was very good at presenting all the choices in the world—while leaving you with just the one he wanted.

Why Ozpin wanted Atlasian military on the ship captained by his favorite cat's paw, that was the real question.

There was a pause in the recording that Jaune imagined was formulated to be exactly as long as Ozpin wanted that tidbit to sink in before he finished. “And do make sure to visit with Glynda while you're here. She was quite cross last time when you entered the system without even docking.” He then lifted his chin. “Please consider all this on your approach and be ready for an immediate meeting upon docking. Safe travels, young Arc.”

And then the recording ended.

A loaded silence filled the air. Jaune leaned past Nora to look to Yang. Thankfully, she looked more annoyed than enraged. Her violet eyes met his and she heaved a sigh. Oddly, before she spoke, she paused to give a petulant look at Weiss of all people.

“I know what you're thinking. And... well the whole thing today? It was my fault for being so ny-ja angry about these three being here. I'm the one that caused the malfunction. That almost killed you and I'm so sorry.” She set her jaw, but tear still glimmered at the edges of her eyes. “We almost lost you because I'm stupid and short-fused, okay? I'll admit that. Protecting Ruby is what matters most to me, but the best way to do that is doing what's best for the crew. I didn't do that today. In fact, I could have killed us all.”

Jaune nodded slightly and sat back in his seat, pressing his index fingers to his lips. “Well... I'm not going to say that's okay. Even if I think everyone on the crew but Blake know exactly why, you've still been out of control since last night. But then, I'm the one that let you go out of control and the cause of it. I shouldn't have made such a big decision without discussing it with the crew. So I'll go light on you and just put you on cleaning duty until such time as I decide you're done.”

Ren frowned. “Cleaning duty? For almost killing you—almost killing us?”

That earned him a Cheshire grin. “Oh Ren, did you forget we just got offered a complete refit at Vale? We're going to have station workers on board; which means I want the entire ship cleaned from spine to belly. That means vents, storage sheds and of course the filterage trap.”

“The filterage trap?” Yang bawled, “But that's where all the waste that's not recycled collects before being ejected! That hasn't been cleaned since—gah! It's never been cleaned.”

“Oh it's been cleaned. That was my job back in the day when I tried the Captain's patience just a little too far. It'll give you time to learn to keep your temper in check,” said Jaune. He ignored the murderous look she was throwing him to look to the rest of the crew plus their guests.

“In the meantime, I know I didn't ask when I hired Blake on because it was hilarious to yank the Adjudicator's chain.” He paused for the expected annoyed response from Weiss, “But you all heard Ozpin. If—and I by that, I mean when Ozpin manipulates us into taking his job because we've been here more times than to pretend anyone but my aunt has free will when he's involved—so 'if' we take this job, it wouldn't hurt us to have operational electronic countermeasures and an extra hand to man the guns.”

“I'm all in favor!” Ruby interrupted, raising her hand. “The ship's been too quiet since Neptune and Sun left. Plus, we already know them. Ya know, sort of.”

“Blake's already super-helpful cutting things up!” Nora chimed in. “And think of what we could do if we got the Xiphos running again with the pilot here! Force projection, baby! It'd be the start of our own fleet!”

Arms folded, Yang just raised a finger. “Abstain. But I guess it's only right I vouch for officer. She knows a lot of tech stuff and she could teach Ruby.”

It took a moment for Blake to realize everyone was looking to her. “What?”

“You're on the crew now,” Ren explained. “You get a vote.”

“You haven't voted.”

“I usually vote last. I prefer breaking ties if need be.” Ren shrugged.

Jaune chuckled. “Also since he's usually the voice of reason I prefer him being the one to break ties.”

Blake shrugged. “Abstain then. I don't really know either of them enough to pass judgment and I haven't been on the crew long enough to know what we need.”

“Sounds like I have competition as the voice of reason,” said Ren, looking impressed. “As for me, I say we still don't know any of these three well enough to honestly call them part of this crew. I'd suggest probationary membership... but I'd also like to point out that no one has actually asked if they want to be part of the crew.”

“And that's why he really should be Captain instead of me. So: Weiss, Pyrrha? Your votes seem to be the ones that count here.”

“If the alternatives are some Freespace moon or something called 'Menagerie', I think I honestly have no choice at all,” Weiss sniffed. “At least as coarse and deliberately annoying as you all have shown yourself to be, at least you seem to be a decent sort of ruffian.”

“Really making me regret my vote, ice queen,” Yang muttered.

Feeling everyone's eyes on her, Pyrrha demurred and studied the table. “If you will have me, I will do whatever is needed to make our jobs a success and keep everyone on board safe.”

“And with that gushing enthusiasm, welcome to our little family aboard the Beacon, ladies.” Jaune stood from his seat. “Now if everyone will excuse me, I believe all of us were locked away from food for the last five hours. On top of the special occasion of new crew, I'm making a special early supper.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rejoice fans of Shattered Stars, for this fic was pushed to the top of my list thanks to a generous P@treon contribution by Galven. Patrons can expedite any of the stories I'm working on, pushing them to the top of my to-do list for just 5 dollars.
> 
> Which will probably go up in the next month because if Shattered Stars in particular is a huge time commitment, being made of double-sized chapters.
> 
> There is a lot of cut content from this one, specifically flashbacks. There was a lot more with Sun and Neptune, a scene with Pyrrha and Valentine, and Weiss shipping out to the Paladin. They'll likely come back soon.
> 
> Like I said before, I'm trying to focus on some less used character combinations this time and I've ALWAYS wanted to do a Weiss and Yang buddy cop type deal and I'm sowing the seeds of that here. Also some Nora/Blake comedy. Don't worry, I'll still pay respect to the original partnerships.
> 
> Also as I've said, the Arkos this time is going to be super-slow burn. I'm approaching Pyrrha and Jaune from different angles this time.
> 
> For Pyrrha, I'm seeing her as someone who was raised not to want this kind of camaraderie but really does want it, resulting in a very hot and cold reaction to it all. Don't say tsundere, because that's not what I'm going for.
> 
> As for Jaune, I've made him a bit more skilled and magnified the jadedness from his first few episodes fed by years of living in Freespace. As others have noticed, there's quite a bit of Malcolm Reynolds in this interpretation which feels kind of right for a worn-down character of Jaune's type.
> 
> Next Episode of Shattered Stars, the crew continue on their way to Vale, but end up confronting a horror unique to Freespace: the Grimm. You definitely want to see how I've adapted them to Space Opera.


	4. War Pig

Five Years Ago. Zact Base Mantle.

The speeches and ceremonies were over. After years of training and preparation, the newest class of cadets were entering the Atlasian Flight Academy. For the next three years, they would train and drill relentlessly to become to front line defenders of their world and all the Zact worlds, bringing order and civilization to the Void.

But for the evening, they were just a bunch of nervous, excited teenagers tasked with meeting and getting to know their fellow cadets.

That was not something seventeen-year-old Pyrrha Nikos felt up to the task of. An only child who had been privately tutored her entire life, her only social experience came from attending formal events with her parents. And while she was often pushed to spend those occasions chatting up children of other Houses of Import around her age, it had never been something she'd been good at.

Which was precisely why she'd been standing against the wall off the room for the past ten minutes. She called herself deciding who to talk to, but in reality, she was stalling to avoid having to initiate a conversation.

That strategy seemed to pan out as a body detached itself from the crowd to come stand next to her. She wore the standard black uniform of a cadet with yellow piping and the white snow-capped mountain emblem of Atlas. Her hair was curly and black, reaching just past her ears and her eyes were a vibrant blue.

“It's a little quieter over here, huh?” the newcomer asked, resting her back against the wall before taking a sip of punch. “Is that why you're here? I never really cared for crowds.”

Pyrrha smiled at her. “I just... don't really know what to do around new people,” she admitted. “So here I stand.”

The other nodded and leaned back, closing her eyes. “Same. Plus it's just a lot to take in, right? Finally being in the Academy? It's like a dream come true. Finally, we get a chance to prove ourselves—to become citizens. For World and Worlds, right?”

“Hmm.” Pyrrha agreed, nodding. “For World and Worlds.” She offered her own cup of punch and they clinked them together. “It's nice to know that at least one other person who feels the same way as I do about this.”

“Agreed.” The other young woman offered her hand. “It's nice to meet you; I'm Cheryl Germinabunt.”

Pyrrha's smile grew. “The feeling is mutual. I'm Pyrrha. Pyrrha Nikos.”

As they shook hands, it wasn't hard for her to notice a change in what she felt might have been her new friend. It was as if a switch had been pulled: one moment Cheryl had been genuinely happy to meet her, the next she was visibly nervous and uncomfortable.

“Oh.” her hand went limp in Pyrrha's. “I'm sorry, I didn't know. I guess you were over here to keep all the hangers on and social climbers away and here I am chatting you up. You must think I'm some pathetic sycophant.”

Letting go of Cheryl's hand, Pyrrha shook her head insistently. “No, of course not. I'm really enjoying our talk.”

To the mortification of probably both of them, Cheryl actually blushed. “That's high praise—you know, coming from you. House of the Valorous, right?”

“My mother is House of the Valorous. I'm still serving for my citizenship like everyone else. I am just like everyone here.” It was clear even to Pyrrha that she was being far too insistent with that; almost pleading.

Cheryl nodded. “Right. Of course. Um... I'm going to go... get some punch. I'll be back, I promise.”

“But you already...” Pyrrha called after the other woman's retreating back, but it was futile, “...have punch.”

It wouldn't be the last broke promise Pyrrha ran into at the Academy. Most in fact would be far more malicious. Eventually she'd learn, but in that moment she held on to the hope that maybe just maybe Cheryl's reaction was an outlier; that the rest of her days at the Academy would be filled with friends and camaraderie.

So she just put on the same fake cordial smile she usually wore to formal affairs and hoped she wouldn't need it long.

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Jaune would have been lying if he said the three new members of the Beacon's crew didn't give him new and exotic headaches in the seven days since they first came aboard as enemy prisoners-slash-refugees.

Weiss was in some ways the best and the worst of the lot, unsurprisingly. Since accepting her new place on the crew, she complained loudly about anything to anyone. The protein tasted off, her bed was too firm and hard on her back, the shower water was never hot enough, the others didn't shower as often or as thoroughly as she would like.

This was undercut by the fact that when given a direct order, she hopped to like a new, hopeful recruit. Which was all the more concerning in Jaune's mind. It was like she expected severe punishment if she didn't follow directive immediately. Considering Pyrrha and Blake didn't share that behavior, it made him wonder where she'd picked it up.

Then there was Blake. While standoffish, she had integrated into the crew the best of the three. She managed not to grate on Ren's nerves on the flight deck, and now that Yang's more violent tendencies had been quelled, Blake gave as good as she got when it came to the blonde woman's teasing.

When it came to her, the only real issue Jaune had was that she was so damn quite. Except at times when she had an obvious place to be on the duty roster, Blake could be anywhere and you wouldn't know it unless she wanted you to. This made private conversations and... talks with the ship's systems... had become awkward in the past week.

Finally, Pyrrha. Jaune frowned in contemplating her.

The flame-haired star-fighter put on a good show as if she was integrating well. The truth was something quite different. He knew the look: the plastic smile that she put on to make it look like everything was alright. Along with so many other false faces he'd been taught by his aunt for what she called 'dealing with people', he'd learned that smile well enough to spot it instantly.

And while he only put it on for special occasions, Pyrrha wore it all the time.

He couldn't let that go on for long. Altruism and basic decency aside, someone with her powers could pop their little world like a soap bubble if she suffered some kind of psychotic break. There was a reason people spoke of 'keeping or killing' any of the remnants of the Emperor's private stocks.

Not only that, by he knew she was avoiding him—an impressive task when they shared a room. Also an odd one seeing as she casually turned down his offer to shuffle the sleeping arrangements now that the initial confrontations were ironed out. It made finding out what the exact problem was more than a little difficult.

“...thinking that you have a lot of wasted space that's there pretty much to make the ship look like a sword and be all 'rawr I'm intimidating'. What if we mounted a shield generator in there? Nothing fancy, just a wavelength scatterer and mass deflection.”

Jaune glanced over from where he sat in the ship's lounge to see Nora's bright orange hair emerged from the down ladder from the cargo area. Recalling the duty roster for the last few days, he say a chance and set his lunch bowl aside.

“And then,” Nora continued to jabber as she hopped off the ladder and into the dining area, “we could reinforce the prow with an alloy of tungsten and neonadum ceramic. That way you could use it like an actual sword. Imagine what you could have done to us last week with that. You would have cut the shuttle clean in half—and maybe Jaune too. He'd have been all 'Ah! Nora I've been cut in half! I Guess you'll have to build that cyborg body I keep saying no to for me after all!'”

“Um... I suppose that sounds like a good idea?” Pyrrha climbed up after her. Like Nora, she was smudged with engine grease and her clothes had tiny burns from sparks. A pair of welding goggles hung around her neck. As usual, she was smiling in a way her eyes didn't reflect.

Standing from the couch he'd been sitting on, Jaune stuffed his hands in his pockets and sidled up behind Nora. “You know what it doesn't sound like though? A very good impression of me.” He smirked as Nora turned to smile at him. “It'd be more like 'It's okay, you can let me go Nora. I'd rather not be a cyborg if it means my legs are shotguns and firing them is how I take every step.'” He humored her by making his voice just as squeaky and womanly as she'd made him sound with her impression.

“Hey Jauney! Can we get some neonadum ceramic? I wanna make Pyrrha's sword all snicker-snack. People'll think twice about fighting the Beacon if our star-fighter can cut off people's retrorocket arrays and weapon racks.”

Jaune put his hand on Nora's head. She responded much like a cat, pushing her head into his hand and making him 'pet' her hair. “Nora. We don't have enough plour on hand to buy enough neonadum to make a ring, much less reinforce the Xiphos.”

He looked toward Pyrrha. The smile was still there, but her eyes were studying the two of them closely; how they were with one another. He gave her a genuine smile with the hope of showing her there wasn't anything wrong with doing so. “Sorry Pyrrha, but your dreams of having a fighter-sized ripping blade will have to go unfulfilled—as much as I hate leaving any woman unfulfilled.”

Nora elbowed him hard in the ribs. “If that was true, you'd be nine feet tall with a plasma cannon in your chest and explosions for fists!”

“Why is it I'm the one you want to cyborg all the time? Why not Ren?”

The ship's engineer scratched the back of her head. “Because I don't wanna ruin Ren, and I do wanna improve you, fearless leader!”

Jaune rolled his eyes and tapped her lightly on the top of the head. “And with that insult, I made lunch. Nothing much: protein extruded into noodles and a simple sauce made from soy. I haven't seen Ren come down to eat—so how about you take a bowl up to him—and remind him we have Blake now so he can take some time off early today.”

Glee sparked in Nora's eyes. “Really? That's great. Thanks, Jauney!” With that, she dashed to the stove where the big pot of noodles sat keeping warm over a low flame. She grabbed a normal bowl from the cabinets over the burners, then a mixing bowl from one near the sink.

“She's always been a big eater,” Jaune commented as he and Pyrrha watched her fill the mixing bowl first.

“That she is.”

His ears detecting signs of strain in her voice, Jaune tried not to sigh out loud. “Pyrrha?” She looked to him askance. “A word please?” He directed her to the lounge area.

Her smile wavered, but Pyrrha followed as Jaune went over and took a seat in one of the arm chairs, allowing her to choose any other seat there without obligation. She picked the couch he'd recently vacated, parking herself in the middle.

Jaune waited until he heard sounds of Nora climbing up toward the flight deck to speak. “Look, I assigned Nora to repairing your Xiphos because she's pretty much the only one with the skill to make any headway. You aren't obligated to work with her. I know how... well I accepted the blame, but we both know Nora is the one that built and set off the charge that...”

“It's my ship. It's my responsibility to oversee its maintenance.” Pyrrha cut him off. “How...” she hesitated, trying to find the words, “... uncomfortable I am around her doesn't change that.” She was quiet along moment before saying: “Did you know she apologized? She even offered to let me hit her with a spanner to make amends. She told me she hopes we can be friends.”

The bitterness in her voice made Jaune frown in sympathy for Nora and Pyrrha both.

But Pyrrha interrupted his dark thoughts with her own. “How can she do that? She barely knows me, has no reason to like me and knows I have every reason to dislike her.” She practically deflated in her seat. “And I tried to kill her and you just a few days ago. It makes no sense.”

Jaune's expression, which had screwed up into one of concern melted into a fond smile. “Nora is Nora. Half the time she's in her own galaxy. But she likes who she likes and she's the most loyal person you'll ever meet. In a lot of ways, she was my first crew member almost a year before my Aunt left the ship to me. Never took a single order that wasn't from me.”

“You're more than crew to each other. You treat her like a sister. Ruby too.”

“Yeah,” Jaune shrugged. “Yang too, if only more of a big sister than little. And Ren's like a brother to me. You don't rattle around in a ceramic and metal box for weeks on end with people without becoming something close to family... or killing each other. Some people can't manage being actual family without that last part though, so...” Having run out of words to say, Jaune just shrugged again.

Pyrrha adjusted her gaze to a point somewhere behind him. “The Paladin was much bigger than the Beacon. It was a lot easier to be alone.”

“Is that something you're looking for?” She didn't respond, so he built on that question. “Look, it's clear you're not happy here. Not just with Nora and me. I mean it's painfully clear how you've been avoiding me, and you've not exactly the Olguyva Tembrsil when it comes to acting, you know? I saw how hard you were pretending to be friendly with Nora just now. You look like that all the time—pretending you're okay when you're not.”

He felt a bit guilty when she flinched at the accusation, but it did confirm his suspicions.

Nodding to himself, he stood and stretched for effect before putting his hands back in his pockets. “We can't have that. Remember the whole bit about snapping and killing each other? As captain, I can't have that.” The look of fear that flashed briefly in her eyes made him hasten to explain.

“I've got a new assignment for you t' that end.” Fear turned to surprise and curiosity. “In addition to any other duties you draw, your job is to find something—anything on this boat that actually makes you happy. And You can recruit anyone else from the crew to the task as long as they don't have something else more vital to do.”

“That's... a very strange order,” she replied at length.

Jaune rubbed the back of his head with a nervous laugh. “Yeah...”

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Jaune sat on a transport container with his arms folded and a darkening bruise spread up his side while his not-Aunt inspected the injury with medical scanner. “Founders and Makers, how can one child do so much damage to himself in just a month on a ship. Am I not giving you enough duties to keep you occupied? Is that it?”

“I got hurt doing my stupid duties.” Jaune pouted. “There's nothing fun to do on this ship. Everyone's doing something and no one has time for me. I hate it here and I wanna go home!”

Just for a moment, his not-Aunt appeared to be on the razor's edge of an outburst. Probably something about how he was never going home and he'd better shape up or she'd space him and Ozpin could burst a lung complaining about it for all she cared.

But then her frustrated expression softened into pity and kindness as she watched the boy brave the throbbing pain in his side. He'd wandered down to Engineering and before Polendina could stop him, he'd taken a solid blow from a heavy piston.

She raised a gloved hand and gave the back of his head a light slap before resting that same hand on his head.

“Really, you mustn't hate the Beacon. She's your home now—a person should never hate your home. How about this: I have a new duty for you...”

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“So you got the idea of how your aunt dealt with you as an unruly child?”

His sense of humor acted before Jaune's common sense could stop it. He put his hand on top of her head much like he did Nora's. Instead of leaning into it like Nora or Ruby, Pyrrha froze. Suddenly it no longer seemed like such a good idea, but something in him decided to play it off instead of doing the smart thing and apologizing.

“Hey. It worked. She's a very smart lady. As for who to recruit, I'd suggest Ruby—after her coding 'class' with Weiss of course. Lunch is on the stove if you're hungry. See you more than likely in the morning.” Then he removed his hand and headed off. No destination in mind, just 'away'. Since he was turned away, he didn't see Pyrrha reach up and touch the top of her head.

After spending a moment running through a number of confused emotions, Pyrrha called after him. “You're wrong about something.”

“Hmm?”

“I don't 'avoid' my problems. I signed on to work with Nora, remember? I haven't been avoiding you.”

Jaune glanced back, curious. “You had me at the part where you clearly label me a 'problem'.”

Pyrrha just glared at him half-heartedly. “I haven't been avoiding you. I go to bed early to keep you from claiming the cot.”

That earned Jaune's full attention. “That is petty and underhanded. How is it possible you don't think you belong on this crew?”

RWBYRWBYRWBY

Three days later, Jaune couldn't say things had improved all that much.

Weiss had made a show of gagging on the powdered egg breakfast he'd made. Blake had caught him the day before singing a Cojah children's song while working on the control panel for one of the ship's broadsiders. And Pyrrha was still working on the Xiphos with Nora and still pretending to be happy about it.

His only real victory had been matching petty for petty by hiding the cot in the captain's quarters until Pyrrha was forced to use the bed. The glare he received when he dragged the thing back in had almost seared the flesh off his bones, but pranks had been how he and Yang and Sun (once upon a time) had bonded, so he figured it was worth a shot. A shot that hadn't really improved anything, but still.

None of that could dampen his mood however, as he now stood on the Beacon's flight deck, watching as the ship made its final approach on Vale Station.

The largest of its kind in the system, Vale was made up of a miles-long cylinder supporting over two-dozen rotating rings with a crown of solar panels on top that always reminded Jaune of a massive, complicated flower. Or a pineapple as Nora insisted on saying. The Paladin could have docked five times over with Vale with room to spare it was so vast.

More importantly, if the Beacon was home, then Vale was (often in a literal sense) going to his favorite aunt's house. His aunt's and his eccentric, sometimes-sends-you-to-surely-die uncle. Not that he'd every say that aloud because Glynda really would kill him for even implying there was anything going on between her and Ozpin.

He smirked at all the times he'd seen her blow up on someone for that as he watched Ren maneuver them around Ring 12 so that could line their cargo bay doors up with a docking pad. He operated the holographic controls like a virtuoso, touching the representations of various retrorocket arrays to engage and disengage them as needed to swing the ship around to a smooth coupling with the station.

“Capture complete,” Ren reported as docking clamps locked on to the Beacon's belly. “We can go aboard whenever you're ready. How long are we going to be here? I was hoping I might get a chance to visit the arboretum. And you know Nora isn't going to be happy if I don't take her by the zoo on Ring 20.”

“It's a mystery box right now, seeing as we don't know how urgent Ozpin's job will be, but refits will take a couple of days at least. Got no plans myself. Maybe hop the bars, see if I can find a nice, quirky girl to talk to.”

Ren rolled his eyes. “Last time you actually found one, her 'quirk' led us to have to rescue you—naked and tied up—from a hotel.”

“You're really not being fair,” Jaune sniffed. “I was not naked, I was wearing underwear.”

“They were her panties.”

“And context is for the weak,” Blake commented sidling in. She had a pair of gun belts hanging over her arm. “Here you both are. Please tell me you don't really feel the need to visit a station armed like this.”

Jaune took one of the belts and buckled it on under the long coat he was wearing. “Only because we also have Ruby with her sniper rifle and Yang and Pyrrha backing her up with heavy plasma. Otherwise we'd have to go armed like Nora on an average day.”

“Are Freespace stations really that dangerous?”

“No. Just Vale. An really only because of one man...”

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“Peter Port!”

A crowd had formed at a safe distance to watch the cargo elevator lower from the docked ship Munchausen. It was a testament to the people of Vale Station that they knew the ship's arrival almost always brought with it some kind of danger with it. Alien lifeforms from beyond Freespace, experimental weapons scavenged from defunct Imperial outposts, or just plain unruly prisoners. They came to watch and often to run.

The running part was starting early though, as the more intelligent people in the crowd figured out what Peter Port's Brand New Thing actually was and tried to fight their way back down the loading platform while the dumber ones were pressing forward.

To a cacophony of grunts and squeals, the elevator shook violently as it descended. Occasionally, a pulse of flame burst against a set of upright blast shields as four pulsing, sickeningly organic-looking nacelles tried in vain to boost up.

'Black' described it pretty well for the most part. An oozy, moist black like wet asphalt. Its main body was a rough sphere covered with dull white ceramic plates sprouting from it in inconsistent intervals. The nacelles erupted from the back.

In addition to a set of overlapping shields hemming it in on the magnetic lift it sat upon, heavy chains had been wrapped around and even through its bulk.

While a number of crewmen tended to lift, armed with heavy plasma rifles and machetes, a large man with neatly parted gray hair and a truly magnificent mustache patrolled around the edge of the elevator. He wore a deep red waistcoat and dark slacks as he egged on the gathered crowd.

“Ah! Excellent! Step up! Come closer! See the greatest folly of the Old Empire: the Grimm!” He gestured grandly to the struggling thing behind him. “Three centuries ago a group of scientists split from the Empire and fled into deep space to carry out their experiments: to breed a species not just adapted to space travel but to space itself! Yes, hideous beast was once a man—or was made from the same stock from which spacelings such as myself descend! Man and spacecraft born and bred as one, now with the single-minded desire to increase their genetic diversity by raiding innocent freespacers like you and me!”

The elevator reached the platform just as he finished his speech. Which was just about the time a lone figure broke through the crowd.

She was tall, blonde and absolutely enraged. Dressed seemingly for business with a white button-down blouse and dark skirt under an open and matching blazer, she incongruously wore a set of armored gauntlets with what appeared to be turbines in the backs of her hands. “Peter Port!” she bellowed, pointing an armored finger at the man, Port.

“Ho-ho! Good morning Glynda! As you can see, I've done what no one else has in decades: captured a live and operation Grimm! A Boarbatusk—bred and designed for boarding vessels. Think of everything we can learn from this wily beast!” His boisterous voice seemed to agitate the creature/craft as it redoubled its efforts in straining against its restraints.

Glynda palmed her face, pushing the spectacles she wore askew. “Peter... even if this was not one of the mostly dangerous creatures in Freespace—which means you shouldn't have it on the station at all, you do realize we have secure docks for exactly this reason, yes?”

The Boarbatusk squealed more and the lift actually rocked under its efforts. Port turned to it and laughed even louder. “Ho-Ho! Try as hard as you want, you won't be getting free of me!”

Glynda glared. “Just get it somewhere secure as soon as possible. I don't have much faith in your restraints. These are creatures born to tear through starship hull defenses after all.”

As soon as the words left her mouth, two things happened: One being that Port's mustache drooped as he realized he was using a single standard shield generator and chains that were substantially weaker than a starship's hull plating. The second being that all of Port's men had the exact same thought and that reacted with something in the Boarbatusk. Its futile squeals turned to a defiant roar was it focused a newfound surge of power to its engines and fired them.

Its great, round body started to spin, failing at first to gain traction on the steel plates of the magnetic lift. Then it powered forward. Obscene momentum snapped the chains and the bone-like plates became charged with crackling red energy that overloaded and ultimately disabled the singular shield. Still possessed of spectacular momentum, it struck the lip of the lift and caught air.

In midair, its body unfolded. A porcine head covered with a bone-white ceramic mask replete with three-foot tusks unrolled form its chest, four piercing red eyes staring balefully about. Four feet ending in glossy ebon hooves struck the surface of the platform with a crash. Now revealed, the Grimm was wrought in the form of a boar as long as a shuttle craft and half again as tall as Port at the hump of its shoulder.

While almost everyone else began to scream and flee, Port had a... slightly different reaction.

“Ho-ho! A feisty one I see. No matter! My men and I bested you in space. We'll best you on terra firma as well.” From his back, he drew of all things and ax. “Remember men! It's been bred to resist beam and plasma weaponry. Physical damage is the way. What ho!”

Even as his own men hesitated with their machetes, Port charged boldly at the Grimm, sinking its ax into its flank just below the lower set of engines sprouting obscenely from its back. For his trouble, he caught a kick in the gut form one of the huge hooves, sending him sprawling across the platform. Only the armor in his suit saved him from having his ribs caved in.

“Peter!” Glynda called with genuine concern for an old friend before expertly covering it by activating her gauntlets. The dynamos span up and the air around her hands and forearms rippled. “You bloody fool. When this is over you and Oobleck will have to answer to me!”

The Boarbatusk wheeled around to face her at this outburst and pawed the ground, ready to charge.

Glynda met it with a glare that could melt steel. “You first though.”

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“If your plan is to do the kind of job you implied when hiring me on, I suggest investing in more mobility options. Three for eight people? Really?” Blake was adjusting the straps that held the ascender rig to her body. It consisted of a pair of bracers capable of firing peizomagnetic grapnels with lines up to sixty feet, a harness around her shoulders and waist to keep the strain of being reeled in by the same form ripping her arms off, and a headset with a HUD over one eye to assist in targeting anchors that could bear her weight.

“It worked when there were five of us and two either usually stayed on the ship or prefer walking up and alternately punching or shooting people.” Jaune had donned a set of armor, as had the whole crew, including a set of clunky chrome boots with heels that clanked as he walked.

All of them were walking through the crowded marketplace that had sprung up between docking platforms to sell goods and services to crews fresh off the ship. Vale's docking ring was designed to give every illusion of an open air area including a projection of a sunlit sky above the elevated docking platforms (which was very good if you could ignore the gaping holes in said sky with lifts coming and going from them).

“We could have had four if you would have let me wear my armor.” Pyrrha was moving stiffly, unaccustomed to the armored flight suit she'd been lent.

Ruby shrugged. “I'm refitting it as fast as I can bet between coding lessons and not having enough materials to do it right, things are going pretty slow. You can't exactly walk around in obvious Zact armor.” She paused, glancing around in case someone overheard, “Um... even if you did scavenge it fair and square!”

“Not that I see the need for them in this...” Weiss looked around, wrinkling her nose, “quaint market, but why such ridiculous antiques? An ascender rig? Jump boots? Did you find them in some prewar garbage heap? I guess Ruby's gravpack is at least from sometime this decade.”

Jaune sighed.“I don't know if you've noticed yet Icy, but we are not swimming in plour here. Like... anywhere. The station bosses are the richest people in the Remnants and they have to spend most of that keeping their people in water and coolant. Massive manufacturing cores and research outposts aren't exactly on our plate out here. We are all vultures out here—welcome to the carcass.”

Then to Blake he said, “As for getting more, that's on the list once we sell off our scavenge and maybe get the upfront pay from Ozpin.”

“None of that explains why we're in need of it now. We're just walking to the station Hub to go see this employer of yours,” Weiss argued.

“You actually never know,” said Ren. “Vale is the safest place in Freespace I know of, but no station is completely safe out here.”

“Of course not,” Pyrrha piped up, “You don't have the patrols and radar net we have... had to detect threats before they're within striking distance—or a robust enough data trunk for instant communication across interstellar distances. I'm starting to understand why you have weapons and armor stashed everywhere.”

Weiss's expression turned even more sour. “Why do you people reject the helping hand of civilization in favor of living in terror all the time?”

The entire party when silent at this to the point where she quickly clammed up. Distantly there was an uproar of shouting voices.

Nora opened her mouth to say something when a young woman with a long, brown braid crossed their path. “Do you know the Maidens yet? The signs are all around of their return.”

“I'm pretty happy with the Founders and the Makers, thanks.” Jaune said with a polite wave.

“Oh they're not a replacement for the Founders and Makers,” the woman protested, keeping herself firmly planted in their way. “But they will unite Freespace when they come back. A new age of tranquility and plenty. They'll have the power to terraform dead worlds.”

“Yeah, that's interesting and all, but we've got places to go.” Yang squared up to intimidate the girl only to be met with a dull stare.

“The Maidens will save you even if you don't believe you know.”

Yang pounded a fist into her palm. “Good to kn--”

“PORT!” The shout was still distant, but rose above the clamor happening somewhere beyond the market stalls around them. Yang paused and the cruel smirk on her lips turned into a grin. “Ny-ja. Owe you five plour, Jaune. Let's see what the old man's got himself into this time.”

An indignant light entered the Maiden-worshipper's eyes. “Are you even listening to me?”

“Let's.” Jaune replied, drawing his two pistols from their holsters to check his ammo. “Only question is 'how'? Blake was right: three mobility options for eight people isn't enough. We can carry a person with us, but someone's going to have to go the long way.”

Ren bowed his head. “I'll probably have the easiest time slipping through the crowd, so leave that to me.”

“And I'm going with Ren!” Nora insisted, giving everyone a look that dared any of them to argue.

Jaune just shook his head. “I was going to point out that the people with mobility devices should carry the lightest among us—that being Weiss, Ren and Nora, but now that's shot... So the boot have the lowest weight limit, so Weiss is with me, The grav pack has the highest, so Yang—”

“Are you calling me fat?”

“I'm calling you packed with badass muscle. So Ruby takes you and Pyrrha, you're with Blake.”

Weiss gave Jaune a sidelong look. “What do you mean I'm with y—gah!” she quailed as Jaune swept her up bridal style. “Don't read anything into this.” For a second she was confused because he was looking off to the side when he said this, as if to an unseen audience instead of her. Then she realized he was speaking to a smirking Yang.

There came a whirring and clicking as the heels of his boots opened and extended a set of braces out of their backs. Jaune crouched as a high-pitched whine came from his soles. With a burst of sound, he leapt twelve feet to the top of a market stall, bounded off it, and landed on an adjacent docking platform. Weiss of course screamed the entire time.

Jaune barely noticed however, as he spied the scene going on two platforms over. A gigantic, black pig was being held aloft in a shimmering bubble while a figured with hair almost the color of his own stood before it, arms upraised. He jumped to the next platform and as he did, the pig rolled into a ball—and fired blue flames from its back. It became a spinning ball of fury that sparked against the bubble until finally breaking through.

“That is not good,” he muttered, “I don't suppose you have a mass driver gun on you, would you?”

Weiss cut off her screaming to look cross. “Of course not! Why would I carry something so useless?”

“Because it's pretty much the only thing useful against Grimm?”

“What's a Grimm?”

By that time, Jaune had landed on the platform where the battle was being joined. Unceremoniously, he dropped Weiss on her feet and pointed. “That.” Ignoring her as she gibbered, he drew his pistols. “And with just a couple of laser pistols, I'm going to have to settle on annoying it to death.”

“And what am I supposed to do?” Weiss watched as a pair of Dermitites—four armed hulks almost as tall as the Boarbatusk itself—dressed in the hunter green security uniforms of Vale mounted the platform and hurled themselves at the beast. One punched it in the head bare-fisted only to get a tusk in the belly, while the other was kicked aside by a powerful hoof.

“Find a mass driver, a railgun—or at least a good mortician for me. I want a nice open casket. Not a lot of flowers—too expensive. Oh and space me with my nice hat. The others will know which once I'm talking about.” With that, he flipped his pistols to full burst mode and started strafing the monster. It bellowed in rage and whipped around toward him.

Weiss stared after him, agog a what was going on in front of her. A loud thump nearby announced the arrival of Yang as dropped by her sister and not long after, Blake and Pyrrha topped the platform behind her. Turning to her recent crewmates, she stammered out, “He said plasma and lasers won't hurt it. Do any of you have a weapon with physical munitions?”

“I can try to shoot a grapnel in its eye,” Blake offered.

“Ruby's rifle has a mass-driver mode and I'd got these,” Yang drew the two heavy pistols she'd used to threaten Pyrrha the first day they met. “Other than that?” She shrugged.

Pyrrha drew her own rifle from her back and charged it on. “Perhaps if we concentrate fire, we can overcome whatever defense it has.”

“That,” Nora flounced up onto the platform behind the group followed by Ren, “Or we throw a lot of grenades at it!” She reached into the satchel at her hip and took out a long black ceramic tube with a pin stuck in the top. “Smoke, fragmentation, white phosphorous, napalm—all the necessary food groups.”

“Is it always explosions with you?” Weiss demanded.

Nora shrugged. “What else is there? Are we going to go and try and punch it or something?” She looked over at Jaune, who continued to circle the boar. He kept up continual fire on the beast, never pausing lest it get an opening to strike at him. “We've gotta do something: Jaune's out there being the perfect distraction!”

“That might be the right idea,” said Pyrrha, pointing to where Ruby was floating about on her gravpack. She'd assembled her rifle and was trying to get a clear shot on the Boarbatusk. With its constant motion however, she couldn't line one up. “If we can keep it still, maybe Ruby can hurt it.”

“That's as good a plan as any,” Ren drew his own twin pistols, a pair modified with integrated blades for close quarters fighting. “Nora? Try not to hit any of us with the grenades.”

She saluted. “Sure thing, Ren!”

The group split up, taking up posts around the Boarbatusk and taking turns firing on it to draw its attention. Assailed from all sides, the thing stomped and pranced in circles, looking for something—anything to focus its fury on.

“Jaune Arc!” Jaune paused in his strafing to toss a sheepish look in Glynda's direction as she stomped toward him. The dynamos in her gauntlets had spun down and were recharging.

“Um... hi Aunt Glynda. Not exactly how I wanted the reunion to go but... how've you been?”

She gave him a stern, but oddly warm look. “Much the same as that did on the ship: Port and Oobleck putting everyone around them in constant peril and me having to clean it up with the occasional help from Polendina. Speaking of which...” Raising her hand, she touched a comm in her ear. “Geppetto. I think it's time to give your prototype a shakedown test right now.”

The comm crackled in her ear before a voice came back. “Are you sure? All major systems are operational of course and the AI is integrated, but now I can't say for certain that she's combat ready at the moment.”

“Well we're ny-jahni well about to find out. Launch it now.”

“Y-yes Capt—well Commander now I suppose—launching now via the service lift at the main trunk. ETA four minutes.”

“That's a long time to have this monster loose, Polendina.”

Jaune shook his head. “Don't worry about it. My crew can keep it busy until then.”

She set her jaw in reply. “You shouldn't have to.”

“We're going to anyway.” With that, he holstered his pistols and pulled out the monstrous mask he'd donned when trying to negotiate with Weiss. Putting it firmly in place, he dashed back into the fray. Only this time he didn't go for the boar, but one of the machetes dropped by Port's men when the beast first broke out.

He grabbed up the weapon in passing and then a second. “Okay, phase one of terrible plan complete. On to phase two.” Taking a sharp turn, he bolted directly for the Grimm. It didn't see his approach, being caught between rapid plasma fire from Pyrrha and actual bullets to its armored skull from Yang.

The jump boots fired and he sprang over its head. Along the way, he shed his coat, dropping it over its eyes so that it tangled in the ridges of its armor and tusks. Then he came down with his full weight behind sinking the machetes into the brute's back on either side of its spine. They sank in all the way to the hilts and the sound the Grimm made nearly ruptured his ear drums.

Getting his feet under himself, he went to fire the boots again, but the Boarbatusk bucked under him and he ended up launching sideways into the platform hard. Something popped in his knee, followed by a flash of blinding pain. A scream tore itself from his throat.

Enraged, the beast turned, homing in on him without the aid of sight. Then four searing red beams tore through the coat over its face, burning it away.

Suddenly all thought of the pain in his knee vanished in favor of annoyance. “It has eye beams?! Why did no one tell me?” Immediately, he was sorry for saying anything because the deadly beams flickered out and the now-unobstructed red eyes focused on him.

Black hooves pawed the ground. Engines breathed fire as they powered up.

Jaune tried to scramble away, but his knee sent an explosion of pain that told him that wasn't going to happen.

The Boarbatusk roared and pushed off to charge, but the hilts of the machetes in its back turned black and twisted hard. The monster tripped in its distraction, coming just short of crushing Jaune with its head. Nothing could overcome its hate though as it made an extra effort and caught Jaune in the upper arm with its tusk, hurling him flying over the edge of the platform.

On the other side of the Boarbatusk, Pyrrha released her hold on the machete's and tried to catch Jaune only to find that his limp form already held aloft by a shimmering bubble of force. A quick look around found the blonde woman she'd seen Jaune speaking with earlier holding a gauntleted hand out toward him.

Evidently, she wasn't the only one who noticed however, as the Boarbatusk focused in on Glynda.

That didn't last long though because a blade flashed down from above to punch through the Grimm's shoulder. Then another struck the other shoulder. Steel cables connected from the hilts of the blades to a flying form in green and black armor. A complicated rig that looked like a giant spider whose legs were tipped with blades emerged from its back with two instead extending cables out to the ones buried in the Boarbatusk's shoulders.

Squealing, the Grimm heaved, but the flying figure didn't give any ground. Instead, they fired two more blades, these sinking into the monster's ribs. Then they started to reel it in. The Grimm dug in its hooves and tried to bull forward.

In that moment, it was finally still enough. From two hundred feet away, a shot rang out and a Superhard Weighted Ceramic round tore through the creature's upper left eye and into its brain. Gore fountained out of the wound and with a shudder, the monster collapsed.

Almost immediately, a foul odor rolled out from the fallen Grimm and black ichor bled from its mouth, ears, engine ducts, and every wound inflicted. The beast's body began to slowly deflate.

Jaune's body slowly lowered onto the platform and Glynda exhaled forcefully. “Port! Get this mess cleaned up! Xiao Long, Valkyrie—get Jaune to the infirmary on this level immediately. It's near the main trunk.” Then she stomped over to Pyrrha, lowering her voice so only the two of them could be heard. “And you. This should have been Jaune's job, but you and I need to have a discussion about using engineered abilities in public. You'll be lucky to not be sold to the Ex-Laws or some rogue geneticist by nightfall.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I ended up leaving the Ozpin stuff for next episode because there was so much to pack in here.
> 
> We get out first look at how Pyrrha got to where she is now and some about Jaune's captaining style. And we're also given a look at where the professors (plus Polendina) are in this AU. I love Port's character so much and I really wish there was more fic with him in it.
> 
> Then there's Penny! Or at least prototype PN2. Not Penny yet, but you'll see what I have in mind very soon.
> 
> And of course we get the Grimm. Genetically altered space raiders with more secrets hinted at and yet to be revealed. Aside from Creeps, which we don't get much of a look at, Boarbatusks seem to be the lowliest chump Grimm, so you can imagine what the other types are like.
> 
> References!
> 
> Blake mentions that context is for the weak, a staple comment from comics blog Scans Daily. She also later sports the 3D Gear from Attack on Titan, an anime I don't really like, but 3D gear is awesome.
> 
> Port's ship is the Munchhausen, a reference to Baron von Munchausen, famous for his grandiose tails of how awesome he is—which are never true.
> 
> Jaune's boots, mask and long coat all combine to turn him into Victorian ghost story/urban legend Spring-heeled Jack, one of my favorite urban legends.
> 
> This chapter was once again expedited via P@treon by Galven. Seeing as Shattered Stars and some of the other stories are twice as long as normal stories, I'm going to have to create a separate tier to expedite them because five dollars is really not enough for the work I put in on them plus the opportunity cost of not being able to write anything else. As much as I love you guys, a man's gotta eat. And make car payments.
> 
> Anyway, next time on Shattered Stars, Jaune recovers and Ozpin makes his offer.
> 
> Not Your Saint George is up next. The 'special' chapter isn't in the works yet, but I have decided I will do it.

**Author's Note:**

> So this is part of a project I've been working on on the side called All The Myriad Ways, where I basically do 'pilots' of fics to see how much demand there is for them. This one is a space opera concept I'm playing with putting some different spins on the various character relationships from RWBY and putting them before an epic space backdrop.
> 
> As for the setting, think Firefly meets the old Star Wars EU where parts of the fall of the Empire weren't necessarily a good thing.
> 
> If the series continues, it would be an episodic space pirates series with a myth arc about the Ex-Laws gaining new tech via captured scientists.


End file.
